Market-based control of shear structures utilizing magnetorheological dampers

The use of magnetorheological (MR) dampers for control of structures subject to seismic, wind, and/or other excitations has been an extensive field of study for over a decade. Many of the proposed feedback control laws have been based on modern linear systems control theory, e.g. linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG) control. Alternatively, this paper presents a nonlinear controller that explicitly handles the dynamic force saturation limits of MR dampers, a feature not available in the design of linear controllers. The nonlinear controller builds on an agent-based control (ABC) architecture with a diverse agent population. Agents can be characterized as buyers or sellers capable of sensing and control respectively. These agents participate in a competitive market place trading control energy in a way that leads to Pareto optimal agent utilities at each control time step. The ABC architecture allows for easy implementation with inexpensive partially decentralized large-scale wireless sensing and control networks. This novel controller is validated with a numerical simulation of a seismically excited six story shear structure with MR dampers at the base of V-braces installed on each story. The controller, deemed a 'market-based controller' (MBC) due to the optimization of agent utilities in control force markets, is compared against a benchmark LQG controller in a variety of test cases.