Copyright © 2012 Chunxiang Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Based on recent research by Li and Liu in 2011, this paper proposes the application of support vector machine- (SVM-) based semiactive control methodology for seismic protection of structures with magnetorheological (MR) dampers. An important and challenging task of designing the MR dampers is to develop an effective semiactive control strategy that can fully exploit the capabilities of MR dampers. However, amplification of the local acceleration response of structures exists in the widely used semiactive control strategies, namely “Switch” control strategies. Then the SVM-based semiactive control strategy has been employed to design MR dampers. Firstly, the LQR controller for the numerical model of a multistory structure formulated using the dynamic dense method is constructed by using the classic LQR control theory. Secondly, an SVM model which comprises the observers and controllers in the control system is designed and trained to emulate the performance of the LQR controller. Finally, an online autofeedback semiactive control strategy is developed by resorting to SVM and then used for designing MR dampers. Simulation results show that the MR dampers utilizing the SVM-based semiactive control algorithm, which eliminates the local acceleration amplification phenomenon, can remarkably reduce the displacement, velocity, and acceleration responses of the structure.