Coupled building control using 'smart' damping strategies

Coupling adjacent buildings with supplemental damping devices is a developing method of mitigating structural responses due to wind and seismic excitations. The concept is to allow structures, vibrating at different frequencies, to exert control forces upon one another to reduce the overall responses of the system. Previous studies have identified optimal coupled building configurations and have introduced passive, active and 'smart' damping control strategies. This paper will focus on the application of 'smart' dampers as coupling link devices to produce control forces between three tall buildings. Smart dampers are semi-active dampers capable of changing their dynamic characteristics in real-time to allow for a variety of control forces to be produced without requiring significant energy. A clipped optimal control strategy is employed for the smart dampers that can provide increased performance, over a comparable passive control strategy, during moderately severe seismic events.