The theoretical study of a semi-active predictive control(SAPC) system with magnetorheological(MR) dampers to reduce the responses of seismically excited structures was presented.The SAPC scheme is based on a prediction model of the system response to obtain the control actions by minimizing an object function,which has a function of self-compensation for time delay occurring in real application.A double-ended shear mode combined with a valve mode MR damper,named MRF-04K damper,with the maximum force of 20 kN was designed and manufactured,and parameters of the Bouc-Wen hysteresis model were determined to portray the behavior of this damper.As an example,a 5-story building frame equipped with 2 MRF-04K dampers was presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed SAPC scheme for addressing time delay and reducing the structural responses under different earthquakes.Comparison with the uncontrolled structure,the passive-off and passive-on cases indicates that both the peak and the norm values of structural responses are all clearly reduced,and the SAPC scheme has a better performance than the two passive cases.
