Development and Laboratory Confirmation of Innovative Self-Reliance Controller

Raising the structural seismic-resistant capability by ductility design and structural control to alleviate the structural response to earthquake are two main concepts of modern structural design. Ductile designed building is subjected to nonlinear status to dissipate energy, thus eliminating the crisis caused by resonance amplification effect. Although it can avoid much base shear and survive an earthquake without collapse, the tremendous structural deformation will lead to much structural damages. To improve such shortcomings by altering the dynamic characters of a structure, the structural response of building subject to strong earthquake needs to be minimized to ensure building within the elastic region. A novel self-reliance control technology combined with the hydraulic interface is proposed in this research. This technology will provide autonomous controls similar to those achieved by using a semi-active control system but without the use of electronic sensors and controllers. Three-stage experimental tests are planned to test and verify the energy-dissipation ratio of this technology, connected to hydraulic jack of hydraulic dampers with various conditions and subject to different external force with various amplitude and frequency. Test results exhibit that (1) this proposed technology may exhibit the hysteretic phenomenon but still show a certain energy-dissipating effectiveness without using computer, and the reliability for using the structural deformation as sensor and also performing continuous control of these proposed controllers has been confirmed in this research, (2) the input energy from the external forces can be converted to produce control actions of this proposed technology, (3) the energy-dissipating efficiency of this technology increases with higher vibration amplitude.