Implications of structural design on the effectiveness of active vibration control of floor structures

Abstract

Active vibration control has shown great potential for reducing the response of floor structures and has the potential to realise significant material savings in slender designs through incorporation from the conceptual stage. However, different structural designs result in different modal properties, and these can significantly affect the effectiveness of an active vibration control implementation. This paper investigates the implications of these different structural designs. Two floor structures with known vibration serviceability issues are considered; both of these are fairly typical designs. Active control is then simulated on each floor in order to improve the response of the structure. A multipedestrian walking force model is developed and used to generate the response of each structure. This loading model is calibrated and verified using experimentally acquired data on the structures considered. It was found that the effectiveness of the control was localised to each structural panel, and therefore the structural design that yielded larger panels required fewer actuators to reduce the response over the entire structure. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.