Vibration Control of Bridge Towers Using a Lumped Modeling Approach

Abstract

A lumped modeling method and a simple robust control design based on this method are proposed in this paper for controlling the multiple vibration modes of a bridge tower structure under construction. The method is specified by a physical state-space suboptimal controller, designed upon a lumped model, combined with the so-called “structure filters” and the software filters for preventing spillover of neglected high modes. Effectiveness of the method is experimentally demonstrated by showing that the first five vibration modes of a model structure of a flexible bridge tower are well controlled without spillover of neglected higher modes.