Fault tolerant plug and play vibration control in building structures

The number and severity of earthquakes has led to a growing interest in control systems capable of improving the safety and integrity of buildings and other structures that are subject to violent vibration control on each building floor is considered as a local control problem within the hierarchical two-level structure. The distributed control system, based on receding horizon control, gives rise to a “plug and play” structure. If individual controller subsystems fail the global can be maintained. An example of a building structure excited by standard seismic data with semi-active hydraulic floor actuators is described. Results demonstrate the fault tolerance of the plug and play distributed system as the coordinator compensates for actuator malfunctions. The distributed system performance is compared with a single level H-∞ controller as a robust system benchmark.