The role of negative stiffness in semi-active control of magneto-rheological dampers

The performance of external dampers depends on the particular combination of energy dissipation and stiffness, where in general damping increases with decreasing damper stiffness. It is therefore of great interest to minimize or even introduce negative damper stiffness. The present paper proposes adaptive control strategies for the applied voltage of a semi-active magneto-rheological damper. From linear equivalent models obtained by harmonic averaging it is found that these control strategies introduce equivalent negative stiffness, and by numerical simulations it is illustrated that they lead to improved response reduction compared to the corresponding case with optimal viscous damping.