Journal of Engineering Mechanics

This paper presents the problem definition and guidelines of a set of benchmark control problems for seismically excited nonlinear buildings. Focusing on three typical steel structures, 3-, 9-, and 20-story buildings designed for the SAC project for the Los Angeles, California region, the goal of this study is to provide a clear basis to evaluate the efficacy of various structural control strategies. A nonlinear evaluation model has been developed that portrays the salient features of the structural system. Evaluation criteria and control constraints are presented for the design problems. The task of each participant in this benchmark study is to define (including sensors and control algorithms), evaluate, and report on their proposed control strategies. These strategies may be either passive, active, semiactive, or a combination thereof. The benchmark control problems will then facilitate direct comparison of the relative merits of the various control strategies. To illustrate some of the design challenges, a sample control strategy employing active control with a linear quadratic Gaussian control algorithm is applied to the 20-story building.

This paper addresses the third-generation benchmark problem on structural control, and focuses on the control of a full-scale, nonlinear, seismically excited, 20-story building. A semiactive design is developed in which magnetorheological (MR) dampers are applied to reduce the structural responses of the benchmark building. Control input determination is based on a clipped-optimal control algorithm which employs absolute acceleration feedback. A phenomenological model of an MR damper, based on a Bouc–Wen element, is employed in the analysis. The semiactive system using the MR damper is compared to the performance of an active system and an ideal semiactive system, which are based on the same nominal controller as is used in the MR damper control algorithm. The results demonstrate that the MR damper is effective, and achieves similar performance to the active and ideal semiactive system, while requiring very little power.

A new control algorithm is proposed in this paper to control the responses of a seismically excited, nonlinear 20-story building with piezoelectric friction dampers. The passive friction damping mechanism is used for low-amplitude vibration while the active counterpart takes over for high-amplitude vibration. Both the stick and sliding phases of dampers are taken into account. To effectively mitigate the peak story drift and floor acceleration of the 20-story building, multiple dampers are placed on the 20-story building based on a sequential procedure developed for optimal performance of the dampers. Extensive simulations indicate that the proposed semiactive dampers can effectively reduce the seismic responses of the uncontrolled building with substantially less external power than its associated active dampers, for instance, 67% less under the 1940 El Centro earthquake when the passive friction force is equal to 10% of the damper capacity.

This paper presents a systematic method for identifying the optimal damper distribution to control the seismic response of a 20-story benchmark building. A genetic algorithm with integer representation was used to determine the damper locations. Both $H_2$- and $H_{\infty }$-norms of the linear system transfer function were utilized as the objective functions. Moreover, frequency weighting was incorporated into the objective functions so that the genetic algorithm emphasized minimization of the response in the second mode of vibration instead of the dominant first mode. The results from numerical simulations of the nonlinear benchmark building show that, depending on the objective function used, the optimal damper locations can vary significantly. However, most of dampers tend to be concentrated in the lowermost and uppermost stories. In general, the damper configurations evaluated herein performed well in terms of reducing the seismic response of the benchmark building in comparison to the uncontrolled building.

This paper focuses on the benchmark control problems for seismically excited nonlinear buildings. The benchmark study focuses on three typical steel structures, 3-, 9-, and 20-story buildings designed for the SAC project for the Los Angeles region. This paper reports the application of the active control scheme on the 3- and 20-story benchmark buildings, where the control action is achieved by a fuzzy logic controller. The main advantage of the fuzzy controller is its inherent robustness and ability to handle any nonlinear behavior of the structure. The performance of the controller is validated through the computer simulation on MATLAB. The control scheme satisfies the control constraints and is presented according to the evaluation criteria provided with the benchmark problems for comparison with other schemes. Four different earthquakes (El Centro 1940, Hachinohe 1968, Northridge 1994, and Kobe 1995) will be used in the simulation.

The third generation benchmark control problem for seismically excited nonlinear buildings is an effort to evaluate the developed control strategies in order to apply them in field applications. As the fuzzy logic control systems have been applied effectively in various fields, including vibration control of structures, a multiobjective optimal fuzzy logic control system has been proposed in this paper. Two types of control devices, namely, active and hybrid, driven by a fuzzy logic controller (FLC) have been considered in the present study. Nondimensionalized peak interstory drift ratio and peak floor acceleration have been used as the two objective functions for the multiobjective optimal design problem. A two-branch tournament genetic algorithm has been used to find a set of Pareto-optimal solutions, as the optimization problem is not necessarily continuous or convex. Performance of the FLC driven active and hybrid control systems have been evaluated for all three third generation benchmark problems for seismically excited nonlinear buildings (3-, 9- and 20-story). Acceleration and velocity information of different floors have been used as feedback to the FLC. This approach provides a set of Pareto optimal designs, from which a controller design can be selected for the required performance. The FLC driven active control system performs better than the sample controller given in the benchmark problem. Though the number of sensors and control devices are far less, the performance of the hybrid is close to the active control system.

A neurocontrol method is applied to the nonlinear benchmark control problem. A neurocontroller is trained based on a reduced-order linear design model, then it is used to control a nonlinear evaluation model. In training the controller, a sensitivity evaluation scheme is used and weights are updated by minimizing a cost function. Absolute accelerations directly measured from sensors are used as the feedback signals for the controller. Not only the current step acceleration, but delay signals of sensor readings, are used to enhance the training capability. Numerical examples show that the controlled responses are considerably reduced compared with the uncontrolled case. In conclusion, the possibility of the proposed control algorithm as a candidate for the controller of nonlinear building is shown.

In this paper, we study the control effect for a 20-story benchmark building and apply passive and semiactive control devices to the building. First, we take viscous damping walls as a passive control device which consists of two outer plates and one inner plate, facing each other with a small gap filled with viscous fluid. The damping force is related to the interstory velocity, temperature, and the shearing area. Next, we take a variable oil damper as a semiactive control device which can produce the control forces by little electrical power. We propose a damper model in which the damping coefficient changes according to the response of the damper and control forces calculated by the controller based on a linear quadratic Gaussian control theory. It is demonstrated from the results of some simulations that both passive device and semiactive device can effectively reduce the response of the structure in various earthquake motions.

This paper presents an overview and problem definition of a benchmark problem for the response control of wind-excited tall buildings. The building considered is a 76-story 306 m concrete office tower proposed for the city of Melbourne, Australia. The building is slender with a height to width ratio of 7.3; hence, it is wind sensitive. Wind tunnel tests for such a 76-story building model have been conducted at the University of Sydney and the results of across-wind data are used in the present benchmark problem. Either active, semiactive, or passive control systems can be installed in the building to reduce the wind response, although only an active control sample problem has been worked out to illustrate the control design. In the case of active control systems, either an active tuned mass damper or an active mass driver can be installed on the top floor. In the case of passive or semiactive systems, such as viscous dampers, viscoelastic dampers, electrorheological, or magnetorheological dampers, etc., control devices can be installed in selected story units. Control constraints and evaluation criteria are presented for the design problem. A simulation program based on the linear quadratic Gaussian technique has been developed and made available for the comparison of the performance of various control strategies.

This paper presents an overview of the wind tunnel studies conducted at the boundary layer wind tunnel facility at the University of Sydney to determine across-wind forces acting on the 76-story 306 m high benchmark building. The paper briefly describes the boundary layer wind tunnel and its special features, and then presents the testing procedures and the methodology used to determine the wind loads acting on a 1:400 model of the building.

The effectiveness of a novel semiactive variable stiffness-tuned mass damper (SAIVS-TMD) for the response control of a wind-excited tall benchmark building is investigated in this study. The benchmark building considered is a proposed 76-story concrete office tower in Melbourne, Australia. It is a slender building 306 m tall with a height to width ratio of 7.3; hence, it is wind sensitive. Across wind load data from wind tunnel tests are used in the present study. The objective of this study is to evaluate the new SAIVS-TMD system, that has the distinct advantage of continuously retuning its frequency due to real time control and is robust to changes in building stiffness and damping. In comparison, the passive tuned mass damper (TMD) can only be tuned to a fixed frequency. A time varying analytical model of the tall building with the SAIVS-TMD is developed. The frequency tuning of the SAIVS-TMD is achieved based on empirical mode decomposition and Hilbert transform instantaneous frequency algorithm developed by the writers. It is shown that the SAIVS-TMD can reduce the structural response substantially, when compared to the uncontrolled case, and it can reduce the response further when compared to the case with TMD. Additionally, it is shown the SAIVS-TMD reduces response even when the building stiffness changes by ±15% and is robust; whereas, the TMD loses its effectiveness under such building stiffness variations. It is also shown that SAIVS-TMD can reduce the response similar to an active TMD; however, with an order of magnitude less power consumption.

In this paper, a “third generation” benchmark problem that focuses on the control of wind excited response of a tall building, using the Model Predictive Control (MPC) scheme, is presented. A 76 story, 306 m tall concrete office tower proposed for the city of Melbourne, Australia, is being used to demonstrate the effectiveness of MPC. The MPC scheme is based on an explicit use of a prediction model of the system response to obtain the control actions by minimizing an objective function. Optimization objectives in MPC include minimization of the difference between the predicted and desired response trajectories, and the control effort subjected to prescribed constraints. By incorporating input/output hard constraints, the MPC scheme provides an optimal control force that satisfies the prescribed constraints.

This paper presents a comprehensive study of the stage-3 benchmark problem for response control of wind-excited tall buildings based on the linear quadratic gaussian (LQG) approach, and on its generalization, the k-cost-cumulant control method. For control design, the original nodal building model is first transformed into balanced modal space. The Hankel singular values (HSVs) and the power spectral density of the wind disturbances are calculated; and, based on them, a reduced-order model is derived by keeping the first six low-frequency modes. A balanced LQG (BLQG) controller is then determined by adopting the HSVs as a basis to choose the design weights. The main results of the paper are that the BLQG control design is able to come within 5–10% of the performance of the sample LQG controller supplied with the benchmark, but with control actions on the order of one-third less than the sample LQG, and with stability improvement features of a substantial nature over the range of stiffness perturbations specified in the benchmark. Finally, if the low authority BLQG controller is regarded as a one-cost-cumulant design, then with the appropriate use of the second-cost cumulant, the latter methodology is able to demonstrate how higher-authority controllers can give certain improvements in performance, but at the expense of significant investment in control action.

Two multiobjective control strategies are presented and applied to the wind-excited benchmark problem. The first strategy, referred to as the energy-to-peak based controller, deals with a class of “energy-bounded” excitations, whereas the second strategy, referred to as the peak-to-peak based controller, addresses a class of peak-bounded excitations. Both control strategies are derived by minimizing the sum of weighted peak response quantities with the constraints (or penalties) on the peak values of another set of quantities such as the control resources. Both the state feedback and dynamic output feedback controllers are derived and presented. The design syntheses of these two control strategies are developed and formulated within the framework of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs), so that the LMI toolbox in MATLAB can be used effectively and conveniently. These two control strategies are applied to the wind-excited 76-story benchmark building to demonstrate their applicability and control performances. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed control strategies are viable for civil engineering structures, and their performances are excellent in comparison with that of the linear quadratic Gaussian sample controller.

A study has been undertaken on the effectiveness of using liquid column vibration absorbers (LCVAs), in the suppression of wind-induced motion of the 76-story benchmark building. Much work has been undertaken on the behavior of the LCVA on an experimental level and its benefits have been demonstrated for wind-induced vibration control on a full-scale communications tower in Sydney, Australia, with a further installation being made on the “One Wall Center Building” Vancouver, Canada. The behavior of the LCVA has also been investigated numerically by use of computational fluid dynamics, and its potential has been illustrated in controlling a five-story building model. In this study, the LCVA adopted is composed of four identical columns of water. Initially, the performance of the LCVA is assessed without the inclusion of additional damping enhancing mechanisms. Subsequently, the same LCVA is considered with the inclusion of orifice plates, allowing a direct comparison of the two strategies. In order to address the issue of robustness, the sensitivity of the LCVA (with and without orifice) to mistuning is examined by perturbing the structural stiffness of the building by +15% and −15%, respectively. From this, an indication of the system performance under conditions of mistuning has been assessed. The performance of the adopted LCVA has also been compared to that of the sample tuned mass damper (TMD) control device. The overall response reductions of the LCVA are shown to be comparable to the TMD. Furthermore, it is shown that the LCVA has several inherent features that make it more attractive than the classical TMD.

The aim of this paper is to discuss the adoption of a fuzzy controller for the reference system proposed in the benchmark problem covering the wind response control of a tall building. The writers approach the problem by conceiving the fuzzy controller as receiving the input from two sensors and driving the single actuator which has been added, in the benchmark problem, to the initially passive control device. The numerical investigation requires that the actual behavior of a fuzzy chip is simulated and this aspect is implemented in the paper.

This paper focuses on the benchmark problem application regarding the vibration control of tall buildings under cross wind excitation. The building under consideration is the 76-story, 306-m tall reinforced concrete office tower proposed for the city of Melbourne, Australia. The adopted control scheme consists of an active tuned mass damper (ATMD) where the control action is achieved by a fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The main advantage of the FLC is its inherent robustness and ability to handle any nonlinear behavior of the structure and the fact that its implementation does not require a mathematical model of the structure. This benchmark study is based on specified design constraints for the ATMD to be considered in the design of the proposed control scheme. The performance of the controller has been demonstrated through the uncertainty in stiffness (+15 and −15% variation from initial stiffness) of the building. The results of the simulation show a good performance by the fuzzy controller for all cases tested. Also the results show that the fuzzy controller performance is similar to the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) controller, while possessing several advantages over the LQG controller.

Among promising control strategies, the sliding mode control is particularly robust with respect to structural uncertainty. In this paper, a modified sliding mode control (MSMC) strategy using dynamic output feedback is presented and demonstrated for the wind-excited benchmark building equipped with an ATMD (active tuned mass damper) control device. The main advantage of the MSMC presented is its ability to systematically modulate the control effort through the introduction of a prefilter prior to the control force. For practical implementation of a MSMC using acceleration measurements at strategic locations, a Kalman–Bucy filter type of observer is designed based on the augmented system. Hence the sliding surface design is composed of the observer state, and the modulation of control forces can be achieved by forming an optimization problem with a linear quadratic objective function. As shown by the simulation results of the wind-excited benchmark building, the modified sliding mode controller indeed has the capability of systematically modulating the control force. Moreover, the remarkable performance of the MSMC demonstrates that the strategy presented is suitable for the wind-excited tall buildings.

A sliding mode fuzzy control (SMFC) is proposed to design a controller for the third-generation benchmark problem on wind-excited buildings. A distinctive feature in vibration control of large civil infrastructure is the existence of large disturbances, such as wind, earthquake, and sea wave forces. Those disturbances govern the behavior of the structure; however, they cannot be precisely measured, especially for the case of wind excitations. Since the structural accelerations are measured only at a limited number of locations without the measurement of the wind forces, the structure of the conventional control may have the feedback loop only. The general structure of the SMFC, proposed herein, is composed of a compensation part and a convergent part. The compensation part prevents the system from diverging, and the convergent part directs the system to the sliding surface. The compensation part uses not only the structural response measurement but also the disturbance measurement, so the SMFC has a feedback loop and a feedforward loop. To realize the virtual feedforward loop for the wind-induced vibration control, a disturbance estimation filter is introduced. The structure of the filter is constructed based on an autoregressive model for the stochastic wind force. This filter estimates the wind force at each time instance based on the measured structural responses and the stochastic information of the wind force. For verification of the proposed algorithm, numerical simulation is carried out on the benchmark problem for wind-excited buildings. The results indicate that the present control algorithm is efficient for reducing the wind-induced vibration.

This paper introduces a linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG)-α control with adjustable relative stability and gain parameter for the benchmark problems. The considered control algorithm is one active control methodology. It provides a various relative stability and introduces a gain parameter via a LQG design. The relative stability not only controls a guaranteed settling time for the system but also increases the controlled system robustness. The paper focuses on both wind- and earthquake-excited benchmark problems of the third generation. The simulation of this LQG-α control to these benchmark problems is provided. An additional simulation of the proposed control to a largely perturbed wind-excited benchmark problem is also provided. The control results, with respect to the evaluation criteria following the benchmark problems, are included for further comparison.

The sinusoidal reference strategy (SRS) is a new strategy developed by the present authors for adaptive feedforward vibration control. The recursive-least-squares algorithm is used and a higher frequency sinusoidal signal is adopted as the reference signal. Some shortcomings of the conventional adaptive feedforward control are overcome. Numerical simulations and experimental studies have been carried out. The results show that this strategy can reduce vibration remarkably, and can adapt in real time to dynamic uncertainties and modeling errors. In this paper, the principle of SRS-based adaptive feedforward control is briefly introduced first, then simulation studies are conducted on reducing wind-induced response of the benchmark wind-excited building. The results are also compared to that obtained from linear quadratic Gaussian control.

Performance of the structure includes both the safety as well as comfort level for the user. The safety of the structure mainly depends on the displacement response, while the comfort level of occupants depends on the acceleration response. In this paper, an approach for multiobjective optimal design of a fuzzy logic controller (FLC)-driven active tuned mass damper (ATMD) has been proposed. The evaluation criteria for both the acceleration and displacement responses have been used as the two objective functions for this multiobjective optimization problem. As a multiobjective optimization approach provides a set of Pareto-optimal solutions, the user is allowed to select an appropriate design for the specific performance requirement. The effectiveness and performance of the proposed FLC-driven ATMD has been investigated for the third-generation benchmark problem for the response control of wind-excited tall buildings. A multiobjective optimization version of the genetic algorithm has been used for obtaining the FLC and ATMD design parameters, as this approach is more effective in handling a discontinuous and nonconvex domain. Performance of the proposed control system has been found to be better than the sample controller given in the benchmark problem. The proposed controller is less sensitive than the sample controller for the variation in the stiffness of the structure.