Comparative Study of Smart Structures Vibrations Under Earthquake Excitations

Abstract

Due to the evolution of design techniques and material qualities in civil engineering, the structures become lighter. When these structures will be located in environments prone to earthquakes or high winds, this lightness may accentuate the vibration causing major problems to structures such as failure, discomfort, noise… Currently, many researchers are interested in this problem to balance between lightness and vibration resistance. From the review of the literature, several methods are proposed in this field, the most used one is based on the principle of the control of vibration. In this case, the reduction of structural vibrations is done by adding a mechanical system composed of intelligent materials. In this paper, the performance of the control system, such as a passive control using tuned mass dampers TMD and/or an active control using active tendons AT and ATMD on a high building subjected to seismic excitation, is studied. A parametric study is conducted by varying a certain key parameter such as the position, the number and the type of the control systems. Finally, to find the ideal position of the active system, three techniques are proposed: method of modal controllability, controllability index and genetic algorithm. For all the cases, numerical simulations are established at MATLAB and the results are illustrated and compared.