Multi-agent replicator controller for sustainable vibration control of smart structures

Developed in the artificial intelligence community, an intelligent agent is an autonomous abstract or software entity that observes through sensors and acts upon an environment in an adaptive or intelligent manner. In a centralized control system, one central controller uses the global measurement data collected from all the sensors installed in the structure to make control decisions and to dispatch them to control devices. The centralized controller itself represents a single point of potential failure. To overcome this shortcoming, decentralized control is used to improve redundancy. This paper introduces three ideas to vibration control of smart structures: agent technology, replicator dynamics from evolutionary game theory, and energy minimization. It presents two new methods: 1) a single-agent Centralized Replicator Controller (CRC) and a decentralized Multi-Agent Replicator Controller (MARC) for vibration control of smart structures. The use of agents and a decentralized approach enhances the robustness of the entire vibration control system. The proposed control methodologies are applied to vibration control of a 3-story steel frame and a 20-story steel benchmark structure subjected to two sets of seismic loadings: historic earthquake accelerograms and artificial earthquakes and compared with the corresponding centralized and decentralized conventional Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) control algorithm.