Design of a VSDD brace control system for parameter estimation of shear structures

In this paper, a new function of variable stiffness & damping device (VSDD) brace control systems is explored: facilitating structural parameter estimation and damage detection. In previous studies by the authors, a substructure identification method has been proposed to identify the structural parameters (story stiffness and damping coefficients) of a shear building. An error analysis shows that the accuracy of the estimated parameters can be greatly improved by amplifying the interstory acceleration near the substructure natural frequency. To achieve this structural response change, two kinds of control strategies are studied herein to design a VSDD system: an on-off passive strategy and a semiactive strategy. Since the accuracy of substructure identification is only dependent on the controlled substructure responses, it is shown that the proposed control-facilitated identification is robust to one common control system error: feedback measurement noise. Finally, a numerical example of a 5-story shear building structure is used to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed control method for improving the accuracy of the substructure identification.