Application of smart strategies against severe dynamic actions

The research described in this paper on the application of active and semi-active structural control in the protection of structures against severe dynamic actions aims at demonstrating the effectiveness of these techniques and also the importance of the use of smart devices. These special devices need a robust control law which should permit to exploit all their innovative performance characteristics. In the paper a study concerning a comparison among different control approaches is presented: the cases of mass damping system and coupled structures are analyzed. Also, some hints for device design are given. In the examined models a wide simulation analysis has shown the achievement of a very satisfying performance. The research results demonstrate that semi-active control based on smart devices and a proper algorithm offer the reliability of purely passive systems, keeping however both capabilities and flexibility of fully active systems.