Active Control in a High-Rise Building under Multidirectional Wind Loads

Active control of a tall building subjected to wind loads is presented in this paper. A 48-story high-rise building (209 m height) equipped with two active mass dampers is used in this research. The structure is subjected to both across-wind and along-wind loads obtained for a rigid model (scaled 1:100) that was tested in the wind tunnel of Politecnico di Milano for two different configurations of the surrounding. The building alone is modeled dynamically using three-dimensional model with a total degrees-of-freedom of 144 (each floor has three degrees-of-freedom: two lateral translations and one rotation about the vertical axis). The state reduced order technique is used for the control purposes. The lateral response of the building in the two directions is controlled simultaneously while the effect of the uncontrolled torsional response of the structure is considered instantaneously. Effects of the wind attackangle on the performance of the controlled system are studied. The results obtained show that both tuned mass dampers and active mass dampers have a great effect on the reduction of the displacement and acceleration responses of the building over a wide range of excitation inputs. However, it is found that controlling the responses in one lateral direction is more effective than that in the other direction due to the unequal effects of the vortex shedding and the torsional responses.