Decentralized control of tall buildings

The response of large-scale building structures can be actively reduced using an appropriate control algorithm and a number of actuators and sensors located within the building. This paper presents a decentralized control approach for controlling the response of tall buildings. The proposed method aims to divide the structural model into several substructures, each one performing on its own controller algorithm. This approach has already been used in controlling large-scale systems such as power transmission systems and space structures. An instantaneous optimal control scheme is used as the control algorithm with different control feedbacks such as velocity feedback alone and displacement and velocity feedback. The stability issue of this method is addressed. A numerical example is used to investigate the performance of the proposed method compared to the case with centralized control. Copyright (c) 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.