Development of High Performance Control Systems for Wind Response Mitigation

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In recent years, there has been an increased shift towards the performance-based analysis and design of buildings to resist natural hazards such as earthquakes and wind. The new paradigm of incorporating high performance control systems to increase building performance under these hazards is promising. Control systems are adaptable devices capable of high energy absorption that would significantly reduce the structural response. However, their design is not holistically integrated into the structural design process in a way that would ensure attaining the targeted performance level of response. This is mostly due to the high range of variability in available control systems, the uncertainties associated with the performance of the control systems and the building, variability in the type of loading in a multi-hazard scheme, and unclear definition of performance measures when it comes to wind loads. The goal of this research is to develop a holistic integration control systems directly at the design stage, with particular attention to structures subjected to a variety of wind hazards, including thunderstorms, hurricanes, gust-fronts, and tornadoes. This methodology will empower the design engineers with technical and financial arguments supporting the integration of control systems within the structural system. By validating the potential benefits of control systems, there will be an increasing number of applications of these systems, enabling an integrated design approach for meeting the performance criteria set for structural response in windstorms. The focus of this project is to develop a probabilistic performance-based methodology for structures equipped with high performance control systems. The objective of the project is twofold: (1) to establish a performance-based methodology that includes the variability of control systems and (2) to support the integration of control systems for wind response mitigation. Loads and response data will be produced using physical models of structures subjected to a variety of wind loads using a boundary-layer wind tunnel, and tornado and microburst simulation facilities. The notion of control system performance, including sensor failure, power failure, and controller sub-performance will be integrated in the procedure using an integrated probabilistic approach. Control systems will be developed following the procedure, which will include a novel variable friction device. Physics based numerical simulations will be developed to validate and demonstrate the performance-based methodology for control systems. These simulations will enable the analysis of life-cycle performance of a structure equipped with control systems under a set of scenarios. Novel quantitative metrics will be formulated to characterize structural performance versus performance of the control systems.