A Stroke-Limitation AMD Control System with Variable Gain and Limited Area for High-Rise Buildings

Collisions between a moving mass and an anti-collision device increase structural responses and threaten structural safety. An active mass damper (AMD) with stroke limitations is often used to avoid collisions. However, a stroke -limited AMD control system with a fixed limited area shortens the available AMD stroke and leads to significant control power. To solve this problem, the design approach with variable gain and limited area (VGLA) is proposed in this study. First, the boundary of variable-limited areas is calculated based on the real-time status of the moving mass. The variable gain (VG) expression at the variable limited area is deduced by considering the saturation of AMD stroke. Then, numerical simulations of a stroke-limited AMD control system with VGLA are conducted on a high-rise building structure. These numerical simulations show that the proposed approach has superior stroke -limitation performance compared with a stroke-limited AMD control system with a fixed limited area. Finally, the proposed approach is validated through experiments on a four-story steel frame.