Robust active control for uncertain structural systems with acceleration sensors

Natural hazards such as earthquakes and strong wind events place large forces on tall, slender structures and on long‐span bridges that inherit numerous uncertainties due to model errors, stress calculations, material properties, and load environments. Thus, a robust feedback control for structural systems is needed. This paper develops a robust active control approach for uncertain structural systems with acceleration sensors and white noise. The approach is based on a robust state feedback control, with the robust α‐degree relative stability, robust H ∞ δ ‐degree disturbance rejection and robust H 2 optimality, and a modified Kalman filter, with α 0 ‐degree relative' stability. The uncertainties considered include structural ones in the system and control input matrices and multiplicative nonstructural ones in the disturbance input matrices. Special singular value decomposition (SVD) is applied to structured uncertain structures. Numerical simulations excited by the 1940 El Centro, California, earthquake data have been carried out for the proposed different robust controllers and LQG for comparison. The resulting approach to robust control may be applied to analysis and design of practical structural systems.