Seismic response control of buildings with force saturation constraints

We present an approach, based on the state dependent Riccati equation, for designing non-collocated seismic response control strategies for buildings accounting for physical constraints, with particular attention to force saturation. We consider both cases of active control using general actuators and semi-active control using magnetorheological dampers. The formulation includes multi control devices, acceleration feedback and time delay compensation. In the active case, the proposed approach is a generalization of the classic linear quadratic regulator, while, in the semi-active case, it represents a novel generalization of the well-established modified clipped optimal approach. As discussed in the paper, the main advantage of the proposed approach with respect to existing strategies is that it allows to naturally handle a broad class of non-linearities as well as different types of control constraints, not limited to force saturation but also including, for instance, displacement limitations. Numerical results on a typical building benchmark problem demonstrate that these additional features are achieved with essentially the same control effectiveness of existing saturation control strategies.