Experimental verification of the use of control systems to improve SHM of shear structures

Active and semiactive structural control systems are installed in structures to mitigate large structural motion during strong earthquakes or high winds. During times when no such hazards are present, the control systems can be temporarily re-tasked to facilitate more accurate characterization of structural health. This strategy provides yet another benefit of installing control systems into buildings at minimum extra cost. In previous studies |1,2|, the authors proposed a method that improves the parameter identification accuracy of shear structures by using control systems to change the structural responses by altering the closed-loop dynamics. Numerical simulations demonstrate that this new controlled identification method effectively improves the accuracy of structural health monitoring. In this paper, shake table experiments are performed on a scaled two-story shear structure to demonstrate how the proposed controlled substructure identification method works in the laboratory. The effects of the active/semiactive control systems on the structure are achieved in these experiments by adding or removing passive components of the structure. The experimental results show that, with the help of the control systems, the structural parameters can be more accurately identified than without control.