Optimum design of a sliding mode control for seismic mitigation of structures equipped with active tuned mass dampers

The active tuned mass damper (ATMD) is an efficient and reliable structural control system for mitigating the dynamic response of structures. The inertial force that an ATMD exerts on a structure to attenuate its otherwise large kinetic energy and undesirable vibrations and displacements is proportional to its excursion. Achieving a balance between the inertial force and excursion requires a control law or feedback mechanism. This study presents a technique for the optimum design of a sliding mode controller (SMC) as the control law for ATMD-equipped structures subjected to earthquakes. The technique includes optimizing an SMC under an artificial earthquake followed by testing its performance under real earthquakes. The SMC of a real 11-story shear building is optimized to demonstrate the technique, and its performance in mitigating the displacements of the building under benchmark near- and far-fault earthquakes is compared against that of a few other techniques (proportional-integral-derivative [PID], linear-quadratic regulator [LQR], and fuzzy logic control [FLC]). Results indicate that the optimum SMC outperforms PID and LQR and exhibits performance comparable to that of FLC in reducing displacements.