Abstract: For the past three decades, significant research and development have been conducted in the field of structural control to mitigate excessive responses caused by earthquake, wind, etc. Structures such as buildings, bridges and vehicle suspension systems are subject to vibrations that may cause malfunctioning, discomfort or collapse. In order to make structures more resistant against these phenomena, passive and active dampers were initially proposed. Magnetorheological dampers are highly nonlinear semiactive devices that can produce high damping forces with less energy requirements than other devices of their class. Additionally, these systems are characterized by parametric uncertainties, limited measurement availability and unknown disturbances. The presence of these factors makes mandatory the use of complex control techniques in order to get a reliable performance of the control system. This talk will highlight some new control algorithms that incorporate these problems in their formulation, especially, the dynamics of the damper.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Hamid Reza Karimi, born in 1976, is a Professor in Control Systems at the Faculty of Engineering and Science of the University of Agder in Norway. His research interests are in the areas of nonlinear systems, networked control systems, robust control/filter design, time-delay systems, wavelets and vibration control of flexible structures with an emphasis on applications in engineering.
Dr. Karimi is a senior member of IEEE and serves as chairman of the IEEE chapter on control systems at IEEE Norway section. He is also serving as an editorial board member for some international journals, such as Mechatronics, Journal of The Franklin-Institute, International Journal of Control, Automation and Systems, Journal of Innovative Computing Information and Control-Express Letters, and International Journal of Control Theory and Applications, etc. He is a member of IEEE Technical Committee on Systems with Uncertainty, IFAC Technical Committee on Robust Control and IFAC Technical Committee on Automotive Control. He was the recipient of the Juan de la Cierva Research Award in 2008, Alexander-von-Humboldt-Stiftung Research Fellowship in 2006, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Research Fellowship in 2003, National Presidency Prize for Distinguished PhD student of Electrical Engineering in 2005 and National Students Book Agency's Award for Distinguished Research Thesis in 2007, etc.