Theoretical Implementation and Experimental Verification of Zero-Power Force Control Mechanism

Earthquake disasters are inevitable, and in recent years, major earthquakes have caused great losses of life and property. To prevent such losses, structures must have sufficient earthquake resistance to preserve the lives of the occupants. Structural control can improve the shock resistance of structures, the actuator is the key issue of the control system. A new prototype of actuator, a neutral equilibrium mechanism (NEM), is proposed in this study. It automatically recovers the energy of the stiffened component of structure. The internal force and energy of the stiffened component can be fully balanced under ideal conditions, namely, no friction force and precise control by this proposed NEM. A NEM can operate with a small amount of energy, requiring only a miniature servo actuator. A prototype of a NEM is verified in experiment. (1) The experimental components of the basic machine test include the following: body friction of the NEM, connecting rod friction, main spring elastic constant, balance spring elastic constant and zero correction. (2) Performance verification of the NEM: The experimental method verifies that the body and the connecting rod have little friction and find the elastic constants of the main spring and balance spring, and the value of zeroing calibration. (3) Efficiency validation of a NEM displays that the little unbalanced force can be provided by a NEM to balance large force, generated by the control mechanism. The magnification factor of this proposed NEM is more than 200. Test results demonstrate that a NEM can achieve a large energy-saving effect without being time-consuming, so the power demand of a NEM can be greatly reduced when applied to structural control.