Energy balance and power demand assessment of actuators in base isolated structures supplemented with modified bang-bang control

This paper investigates the feasibility of supplementing base isolation with active bang-bang control mechanisms. We formulate discrete approximations to energy-balance and power-demand equations for a base isolated structure supplemented with constant stiffness bang-bang (CKBB) control. Numerical experiments are conducted to: (1) Identify situations when constant stiffness bang-bang control is most likely to \"add value\" to system responses due to base isolation alone, and (2) Quantitatively determine the work done and power required by the actuators. A key observation from the numerical experiments is that \"overall performance\" of the actuators is coupled to \"input energy per unit time.\"