US Japan collaborative research effort will be made here to focus on minimizing damage caused by a strong motion earthquake to continuous girder bridges. Investigations will center on acquisition of a magnetorheological (MR) damper, development o a robot neural-fuzzy control algorithm, experimental full-scale implementation, and damage of a bearing system during testing. The goal is to demonstrate control of vibrations through supplemental damping in a subcomponent of a major constructed facility. Success of magnetorheological damper technology is imminent and needs multiple large-scale experiments for verification of the approach to amelioration of damaging effects of earthquakes.
A magnetorheological damper will be constructed at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, USA. This portion of the research team will also establish a neural network representation of the behavior of the damper. Concurrently, a neural-fuzzy algorithm will be developed jointly by The University of Tokyo and Texas A&M University for control of the MR dampers during seismic excitation. Finally, the dampers will be installed in a full-scale dynamic test of a bridge bearing that has simultaneous motion in its two in-plane directions. Successful demonstration of this technology is intended to encourage governmental agencies that construct and maintain continuous girder bridges in urban areas to consider using MR dampers as supplemental damping devices in new and retrofit bridge designs.
This project is supported under the 3rd-year competition under NSF 98-36. "US Japan Cooperative Research in Urban Earthquake Disaster Mitigation."
