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Active Mass Damper

Control vibrations in tall structures

Earthquake Engineering

The Quanser Active Mass Damper (AMD) is a bench-scale model of a tall building equipped with an active damper. It is ideal for studying control techniques used to actively suppress vibrations in tall buildings. The AMD experiment is available in three different configurations: 1-floor AMD, 2-floor AMD with a single active cart, and 2-floor AMD with two active carts.

AMD1-B
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Product Details

The Active Mass Damper (AMD) plant consists of a building-like structure with a controllable linear cart on the top. The cart is driven by a high-quality DC motor through a rack and pinion mechanism. The AMD frame is made of aluminum and is flexible along its facade. The top floor is instrumented with an accelerometer to measure the acceleration of the “roof” relative to the ground. The cart position is directly measured using an encoder. The encoder shaft meshes with the track via an additional pinion. Two masses can be attached to the cart to increase its inertia to absorb vibrations of the structure. The masses can be used individually, together or can be removed to assess the robustness of the controller and effects of variations in parameters.

  • High-quality DC servo motor and gearbox
  • High-resolution optical encoders for precise cart position measurements
  • Variable cart load mass
  • Precise, stiff and heavy-duty machined components
  • Open architecture design, allowing users to design their own controller
Dimensions (L x W x H)32 cm x 11 cm x 63 cm
Total Mass2.83 kg
Flexible Structure Height50 cm
Cart Rack Height13 cm
Flexible Structure Natural Frequency1.57 Hz
Flexible Structure Linear Stiffness173 N/m
Cart Travel± 9.5 cm
Cart Encoder Resolution4096 counts/rev
Accelerometer Sensitivity1.0 g/V
  • PV control
  • Pole location
  • State-space representation
  • Transfer function representation
  • State-feedback control
  • Control parameter tuning
  • Switching-mode control

The following additional components are required to complete your workstation, and are sold separately:

For Simulink

  • QUARC Essentials for MATLAB®/Simulink®
  • Quanser VoltPAQ-X1 linear voltage amplifier
  • One of the following DAQ devices:
    • Quanser Q2-USB
    • Quanser Q8-USB
    • Quanser QPIDe

Group Citation: Earthquake Engineering



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