An input-to-state stabilizing control approach for non-linear structures under strong ground motions

The bottom and other vulnerable floors of civil structures usually have large, non-linear-induced deformation due to seismic excitations, possibly bring about the total collapse of the overall structures. Representing severe local damage is a distinct subsystem property of civil structures. Hence, it may be more convenient to design decentralized controllers that depend only on information regarding the local states for control command calculation as the decentralized controllers may pay more attention to a particular vulnerable subsystem. In this study, a non-linear robust control approach is proposed to address the vibration control problem of civil structures using the subsystem property. The overall structure is decomposed into several subsystems, with different subsystems adopting corresponding control algorithms. The input-to-state stability of the entire system can be guaranteed by the proposed control method. Furthermore, H infinity performance is achieved through a subsystem with the proposed controller. Finally, numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed controller. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.