Integrated vibration control and health monitoring of building structures using semi-active friction dampers: Part I—methodology

Vibration control and health monitoring of building structures subjected to harsh environments have been actively investigated in recent years. Nevertheless, in most investigations the two aspects have been treated separately. This paper presents an integrated procedure for vibration control and health monitoring of a building structure using semi-active friction dampers. The concept of an integrated system using semi-active friction dampers is first introduced. A scheme based on adding a known stiffness by using semi-active friction dampers is then presented to update the stiffness and mass matrices of the building and to identify its structural parameters. Based on the updated system matrices, the control performance of semi-active friction dampers using local feedback control with a Kalman filter is investigated for a building subjected to earthquake excitation. By assuming that the building suffers certain damage after extreme events or long service and by using the previously identified original structural parameters, a damage detection scheme based on adding a known stiffness using semi-active friction dampers is proposed and used for damage detection. The feasibility and accuracy of the proposed integrated procedure will be demonstrated in Part II of this paper through detailed numerical examples and parametric studies.