Active structural control with input dead zone based on equivalent-input-disturbance approach

This paper presents an active control method that suppresses structural vibrations caused by wind and earthquakes. It is based on an equivalent-input-disturbance approach, which estimates a disturbance and produces an equivalent signal on the control input channel. We apply this approach by taking the vibrations to be a disturbance. This yields better vibration suppression performance than others. It can also compensate for unknown nonlinearities, such as a dead zone. A comparison of this method with LQR for a three-story building demonstrates the validity of the method.