Active self-tuned mass damper for vibration control and continuous monitoring of civil structures

Several examples of control strategies for the seismic protection of civil structures, ranging from passive to active and semi-active have been presented in the scientific literature, and often applied in the market. However, none of them proved to be absent of high employment costs or burdensome installations. For this reason, the low-cost Active Mass Damper (AMD) shown in this work and capable of automated self-tuning, control and continuous monitoring of the structures represents an attractive solution. The device has been designed and tested on the numerical model of a scaled steel made three story building. In particular its working principle and the ISAAC algorithm for automatic identification are presented and its robustness against modelling and estimation errors is analyzed. The methodology allows to avoid the study of specific solutions for each case, thus making possible the adoption of such systems also for already existing and common structures.