Implementation of an active mass driver for increasing damping ratios of the laboratorial model of a building

This paper describes the experimental work involving a laboratorial implementation of an active system to increase the damping ratios of a plane frame physical model of a building structure of three storeys. For this purpose, the use of an Active Mass Driver commanded by the Direct Velocity Feedback control law is suggested. The study developed to define the maximum control gain based on the classical Root-Locus technique, as well as the analysis of system stability is presented. The efficiency of the proposed control system to achieve pre-defined damping ratios is verified experimentally by observing free decay responses of the system at several natural frequencies before and after control.