Model identification of a large-scale magnetorheological fluid damper

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in magnetorheological (MR) dampers and their applications to civil engineering structures. In particular they have been used as semi-active control devices for the mitigation of vibration due to external dynamic loads. These devices are highly nonlinear, and thus accurate models of them are important for effective simulation and control system design. A hysteretic model based on the normalized Bouc-Wen model is proposed in this paper to test its effectiveness in a large-scale MR fluid damper. A methodology for identification is proposed, and the obtained model is tested and validated experimentally.