Pounding hazard mitigation between adjacent planar buildings using coupling strategy

Abstract

The concept of coupled building is utilized to synchronize the response of two adjacent buildings and reduce the minimum gap needed. This aims to avoid the pounding hazard between the two buildings, which are coupled together. With this background in view, two ten-storey-high planar buildings with different dynamic proprieties are connected with the help of a magneto-rheological (MR) damper. The MR damper is located at the top floor of the buildings. The semi-actively controlled MR damper is driven by a passive-on, passive-off, on-off controller and fuzzy logic controller. A comparative study is conducted for adjacent planar buildings, with testing of different control strategies. It is shown that a coupling strategy allows transforming the two separated structures into one system coupled by a damping device, which results in a synchronized vibrating mode between the two coupled structures. It has been found that the chances of pounding are reduced along with a reduction in terms of displacement, acceleration and inter-storey drift. The use of a fuzzy logic controller results in an optimization in terms of damper force. In addition to this, it is also observed that the use of a single damper at the top floor has a significant effect on the reduction of pounding between the two buildings.