ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT: Civil structures are traditionally designed to resist static loads. Civil structures are, however, subjected to a variety of dynamic loadings, including earthquakes, winds, waves, and traffic. These dynamic loads can cause severe and/or sustained vibratory motion, botb of which can be detrimental to tbe structure and its material and human occupants. Structural control can mitigate these effects by absorbing and redistributing the energy introduced by dynamic loads. Passive, active and semiactive control strategies have been proposed and implemented in a number of civil structures. Smart damping technology, a type of semiactive control, assumes tbe positive aspects of passive and active control devices, providing similar increased performance as active control without large energy requirements like passive control. More efficient control strategies can be designed if engineers can more readably identify which controller is best applied for each application.
