Control Systems of Building Structures by Active Cables

Abstract

This paper proposes a general control system for building structures by active tendons. The practical feasibility of the control system is numerically tested by a discrete‐time mathematical model, which takes into account all the elements in the control loop and provides full information about the solicitations on the elements of the control system. In the numerical experiments two 23‐story buildings—a frame building and a shear‐wall building—are subjected to seismic and wind excitation. To compute the control forces a predictive strategy is considered that includes the time delay of the actuators in its formulation. The results of the numerical experiments prove that active cables combine to create a feasible, reliable, and robust control system for average‐size buildings and that they are more effective in buildings with the dynamics found in shear‐wall buildings.