Development of a new method for online parameter identification in seismically excited smart building structures using virtual synchronization and adaptive control design

Abstract

In this paper a new method for online parameter identification and damage detection in smart building structures that are subjected to arbitrary seismic excitation is proposed. It uses real-time measurements of a structure's motion to identify its unknown constant or piecewise constant parameters such as stiffness, damping and mass over the time. The method is based on elements of system synchronization and adaptive control theories. First, a computational system, called the virtual system, is defined. Next, by using properly designed controller and estimations for the unknown parameters, the state of the virtual system is forced to follow the measured motion of the real structure. The mentioned estimations are computed from a proposed update law which depends on the measured motion of the real structure and the virtual system’s state. A major theoretical novelty of this paper is a proposed convergence condition which is applicable in case of arbitrary external forces or ground acceleration. It is shown that upon the satisfaction of that condition, as the synchronization completes, the computed estimation function converges to the true value of the vector of unknown parameters. In addition, an important practical contribution presented in this study is the introduction of a technique called scale factors. It helps to use available initial guesses of the unknown parameters to improve the speed of online identification. Numerical examples show that the proposed method is promising and has a good performance in both online identification and online damage detection problems.