| Summary: |
Tall or long-span civil engineering (CE) structures should be designed to enable better performance under different actions, particularly dynamic and transient loads. There has been a continuous trend to use damping systems to reduce building (and CE structures) accelerations, velocities and displacements. In CE there are three fundamental control strategies to control the response of a structure (tall building or bridge) fundamentally (but not solely) to wind or earthquakes: passive control, active control, and semi-active control. As technology continues to advance, the need for vibration isolation mitigation and damping becomes increasingly necessary. More reliable devices with a higher frequency bandwidth, smaller size, and lower power requirement are needed. Then semi-active control of vibration is an area of much interest because of its potential to provide these characteristics. R&D studies on passive control in CE (through base isolation devices) done in the past by some of the partners of this CRP, will be continued herein through experimentation at LNEC's facilities on behalf of FEUP (PL partner Po-1) and IST (PI partner Po-2) technical interests; additionally, will be applied to real structures by the IST team (partner Po-2). Theoretical research presented recently by the PL on active control by ceramic stacks of actuators, will be further developed to beams and plates with the collaboration of partner It-1. Such developments will constitute scientific added value, inducing future sources of R&D namely at FEUP. |