Semiactive control of the 20-story benchmark building with piezoelectric friction dampers

A new control algorithm is proposed in this paper to control the responses of a seismically excited, nonlinear 20-story building with piezoelectric friction dampers. The passive friction damping mechanism is used for low-amplitude vibration while the active counterpart takes over for high-amplitude vibration. Both the stick and sliding phases of dampers are taken into account. To effectively mitigate the peak story drift and floor acceleration of the 20-story building, multiple dampers are placed on the 20-story building based on a sequential procedure developed for optimal performance of the dampers. Extensive simulations indicate that the proposed semiactive dampers can effectively reduce the seismic responses of the uncontrolled building with substantially less external power than its associated active dampers, for instance, 67% less under the 1940 El Centro earthquake when the passive friction force is equal to 10% of the damper capacity. CE Database subject headings: Friction; Damping; Piezoelectricity; Structural control; Optimization; Performance evaluation.