Gust Factor Approach for Estimating Maximum Response and Control Force in High-Rise Base-Isolated Buildings with Active Structural Control

Abstract

This paper devises a new method for estimating the maximum response and maximum control force for high-rise base-isolated buildings with active structural control (active base isolation) to simplify the conventional complex design procedure. While active base isolation has emerged as a prominent solution for achieving high control performance, its design process is inherently complex, particularly when applied to high-rise buildings where wind loads become prominent. To address this problem, we propose a streamlined method inspired by the gust factor methodology widely used in conventional passive wind-resistant designs. This method estimates the maximum response and maximum control force without the need for numerical simulations. We first construct an equivalent passive model of a multi-degree-of-freedom control system to theoretically compute the dynamics of the system. Based on the constructed equivalent passive model and then propose a method to calculate the mean displacement and mean control force using only the static equilibrium of this model. Furthermore, we extend the conventional gust factor approach to active base isolation to estimate the maximum displacement and maximum control force for active base isolation without the need for numerical simulations. We validate our methods through a series of numerical examples, incorporating key parameters such as feedback gain, aspect ratio of building, return period of wind force, and stiffness of isolation. Numerical verifications show that the mean response and mean control force are estimated by the static equilibrium of the proposed equivalent passive model. Moreover, the maximum response and maximum control force can be estimated by the proposed gust factors. Our methods can be applied for feedback control systems using a given feedback gain.