An investigation of the effects of structural nonlinearity on the seismic performance degradation of active and passive control systems used for supplemental energy dissipation

It is generally accepted that active control systems provide better structural performance when compared to their passive counterparts. On the other hand, the design of active control systems based on linear control theory is highly dependent on the structural properties. For this reason, their performance is expected to be affected more severely by variations in structural properties compared to those of passive systems. These variations can occur due to nonlinear structural behavior, or even before that due to uncertainties in the estimation of these properties and in numerical modeling. The present work is an investigation of the dependency of various control systems used for supplemental energy dissipation to the changes in structural properties. For this purpose, the performance degradations of most common control systems are studied for structures entering their nonlinear response range. The considered control systems include active control using linear quadratic regulator algorithm and passive control using viscous fluid dampers and yielding devices. These control systems are optimized separately for linear and nonlinear structures by minimizing performance indices based on inter-story drift and absolute acceleration response. It is shown that among these control systems, viscous dampers are affected the least by the alteration of structural properties, which may further support their utilization contrary to the more costly active control systems. It is also shown that the amount of performance degradation depends on the selected structural performance index, and more importantly, the severity of the earthquake excitation.