Vibration control of a wind-excited benchmark tall building with complex lateral-torsional modes of vibration

This paper describes a proposed wind-excited benchmark tall building incorporating three-dimensional lateral-torsional modes of vibration, which is typical of a significant number of modern tall buildings. A series of wind tunnel pressure tests were conducted on a 1:400 scale model to determine the translalional and torsional wind forces acting on the benchmark building. A finite element model was also constructed and mass, damping, and stiffness matrices were subsequently formulated as an evaluation model for numerical analysis. The evaluation model was further simplified to a state reduced-order system (ROS) using the state order reduction method. A numerical vibration control example was conducted to demonstrate the suppression of the wind-induced three-dimensional lateral-torsional motions using a bi-directional tuned mass damper (TMD) incorporating two magnetorheological (MR) dampers, one in each orthogonal direction, to act as a semi-active control system, referred to as a smart tuned mass damper (STMD). The optimal control forces generated by the MR dampers were obtained through the linear quadratic regulator (1.QR) to minimize the storey accelerations. The formulation details, methodology and numerical simulation results are outlined in this paper.