Coupling ATMD System for Seismic Response Control of Two Adjacent Buildings

Abstract

This study deals with optimal control of the coupling active tuned mass damper (ATMD) system for two neighboring structures under earthquake excitations. It also investigates the seismic performances of the proposed system including the issues on actuator failure problems. The conventional control approach is to use two ATMDs independently where each ATMD is individually installed at each structure without any connection between two structures. Since this uncoupling configuration does not allow transferring its control force to the other structure, it cannot adapt to emergency situation in which one of the two actuators becomes inoperable due to the power cuts or outages. On the other hand, the proposed control approach is to use a coupling ATMD system where two ATMDs with one mass being shared are installed to interconnect two structures. Hence, the proposed coupling ATMD system can transmit the control force of the remaining actuator to another structure through the interconnection configuration so that it can adapt to the one-side actuator failure. In a numerical example, the conventional independent and newly proposed coupling systems have been optimally designed to have similar control performance in normal operational conditions, and their performances have been compared to each other under the malfunction conditions of one-side actuator. Their comparative results verified the outstanding adaptive performance of the proposed coupling ATMD system over the independent ATMD system. The independent ATMD system showed considerably degraded control performance compared to its own normal control performance, whereas the proposed system exhibits much improved control performance over the independent ATMD system by fully utilizing the other normally operating actuators through the coupling configuration.