Performance-based controller for civil engineering structures

The authors present two control strategies for applications to civil engineering structures, referred to as the generalized H₂ based control and peak-to-peak based control, respectively. Both control strategies are capable of addressing the performance-based design of structures, in the sense that the design requirements for the peak response quantities, such as peak interstory drifts, peak shear forces, peak floor accelerations, etc., can be satisfied. Likewise, these two controllers minimize an upper bound of the peak response components of a controlled output vector. The design procedures for these two controllers are formulated in the framework of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) so that the LMI toolbox in MATLAB can be used effectively and conveniently for the controller design. These control strategies are applied to a seismically excited 20-story benchmark building to demonstrate their applicability to practical problems as well as their control performances. Simulation results illustrate that the performances of both the generalized H₂ based controller and the peak-to-peak based controller are very plausible in comparison with the LQG control method