Semi-active leverage-type isolation system considering minimum structural energy

Semi-active isolation systems based on leverage-type stiffness control strategies have been widely studied. The main concept behind this type of system is to adjust the stiffness in the isolator to match the fundamental period of the isolated system by using a simple leverage mechanism. Although this system achieves high performance under far-field earthquakes, it is unsuitable for near-fault strong ground motion. To overcome this problem, this study considers the potential energy effect in the control law of the semi-active isolation system. The minimal energy weighting (MEW) between the potential energy and kinetic energy was first optimized through a series of numerical simulations. Two MEW algorithms, namely generic and near-fault MEW control, were then developed to efficiently reduce the structural displacement responses. To demonstrate the performance of the proposed method, a two-degree-of-freedom structure was employed as a benchmark. Numerical results indicate that the dynamic response of the structure can be effectively dampened by the proposed MEW control under both far-field and near-fault earthquakes, whereas the structural responses resulting from conventional control methods may be greater than those for the purely passive control method. Moreover, according to experimental verifications, both the generic and near-fault MEW control modes yielded promising results under impulse-like earthquakes. The practicability of the proposed control algorithm was verified.