Selective Control of Base-Isolated Structures with CS Dampers

Addition of dampers to a base isolator reduces base displacements but may increase floor accelerations and interstory drifts. This paper presents a “selective control approach” for the design of base-isolated active controlled structures with Controlled Stiffness Dampers (CSD). According to this approach the dampers are activated only within a given range of the base displacement. The optimal damping forces are calculated according to structure's displacements and velocities. However, because of the CS dampers' structure the actual application of the forces is independent of the displacement and the velocity that are transferred to the device. These forces depend only on the geometry and on the mechanical properties of the devices' springs. The efficiency of the proposed method is demonstrated in a numerical example.