High Performance Passive Damper With Ingenious Hydraulic Valve System

Newly developed ingenious hydraulic valve system (MAIKO-Ben) autonomously controls the flow valve opening between two hydraulic chambers utilizing the pressure balance between them without an external power source. This impressive function can create a passive hydraulic damper with high performance equivalent to that of previously developed semi-active damper that can absorb much more structural vibration energy than a conventional passive damper. This damper works a semi-active damper while remaining passive. First, we explain the self-regulating hydraulic mechanism of this valve system. The flow control valve is activated through the hydraulic power accumulated in rather small buffer placed between the two hydraulic chambers, and produces maximum or minimum damping coefficient based on the pressure balance between them. Second, we present the results of dynamic loading tests conducted on a full-scale prototype damper (maximum force: 2MN) under both sinusoidal waves and non-stationary seismic response waves. It is confirmed that the developed device showed excellent energy dissipation capacity as expected, and also that the damper’s dynamic characteristics could be well simulated through simply modeling the above hydraulic mechanism. According to these results, it is verified that the MAIKO-Ben system has enough promise to be applied to the real buildings.