Application of controllability measure for actuator placement in a civil engineering structure

An eight storey flexible building is considered for active control with an emphasis on the problem of efficient actuator placement. An active bracing system (ABS) is used as the control mechanism. Several practically feasible ABS configurations are evaluated using a recently proposed controllability measure and, based on this evaluation, one of these is selected as the design configuration. As a practical constraint, at most two ABS and three sensors are assumed to be available. An output feedback linear quadratic regulator is used as a controller. To verify the conclusions based on the controllability measure, performance of this control system is evaluated with these actuator configurations using time-history analyses. Important response quantities, such as peak and root-mean-square (RMS) relative displacement, absolute acceleration, control force and energy requirement are used for the analysis.