A Bench-Scale Experiment for AMD-Building

Control Systems

G. Jin, M. K. Sain, B. F. Spencer, Jr. M. ASCE

University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA
Gang.Jin.6@nd.edu, sain@krizevac.ee.nd.edu, spencer@nd.edu

Abstract
This paper presents a comprehensive report of a bench-scale AMD-building struc-
tural control experiment conducted at the University of Notre Dame. The following
topics are discussed: analytical modeling of the system, frequency domain state space
identification, and LQG control design in the balanced modal space. A short intro-
duction to the system setup will be given at the beginning, and the experimental
results will be presented, along with discussion. It is not possible for us to include all
the relevant research work in this paper, due to its size limitations. For this reason,
we have included a brief discussion, at the end of the paper, which points out some
new possibilities for system design.

1. Introduction
Recently there has been an increasing interest in real-time structural control exper-
iments in the ASCE engineering mechanics community for both research and edu-
cational purposes. Accordingly, a bench-scale structural control system (Figure 1)
has been developed in the Structural Dynamics and Control/Earthquake Engineer-
ing Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. The system contains a scaled 3-
story building structure, two PD-controlled Active Mass Drivers (AMD), a DC-motor
driven shaking table, and a personal computer. The AMDs are installed in the build-
ing to reduce its vibrations due to the simulated earthquake produced by the shaking
table. The acceleration of each floor is measured by an accelerometer, and the relative
displacement of the AMD with respect to the structure is measured by an encoder.
The digital controller is written in Simulink, and outputs displacement commands
to the AMDs. The real-time control software is WinCon, which interfaces with the
structural system through a MultiQ board. The system thus designed models a large
number of full-scale implementations of its kind (Spencer and Sain, 1997). For a more
detailed description of the experiment, the reader may refer to (Battaini et al, 2000).
The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. In the next section, we will derive an an-
alytical lumped-parameter model of the system. Even though this model will not be
used for the control design, it helps us to build an overview of the system, and to un-
derstand some key points, e.g. transfer function zero locations and control-structure

Manuscript submitted February 29, 2000 to the Fourteenth ASCE Engineering Mechanics Con-
ference. This work was supported in part by the Frank M. Freimann Chair in Electrical Engineering,
University of Notre Dame, and by the National Science Foundation under Grants CMS 93-01584,
CMS 95-00301, CMS 95-28083 and CMS 99-00234. We also wish to thank Quanser Consulting
Inc. (http://www.quanser.com) for providing the bench-scale structure, the active mass driver, the
MultiQ I/O board and the WinCon software used in this work.

1
 u u x ddot
a1 a2 g
0
10

x ddot
0
20 20
10

3
20
40 30
40
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
0 0 10

x ddot
0
20 20

2
10
40 40 20
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
0 10
0
0

x ddot
20 20 10

1
20
40 40 30
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
10
0 20 0
30

a1
20

x
10 40 40
50
20 60
1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
5
20 0 0
5 10

a2
20
x
40 10
15 30

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

Figure 1: Experiment Setup Figure 2: FRF Data v.s. Identified Model

interactions. Following this, the frequency domain system identification technique is

discussed, which produces a discrete-time state space model of the system. Based on
the continuous equivalence of this model, the Linear Quadratic Gaussian (LQG) con-
troller is designed in the balanced modal space. Finally the experimental closed-loop
results are presented, and some related research problems are briefly discussed.

2. Analytical Modeling of the System

In this section we will present an analytical state space model for the system. We
will model the AMDs and the structure separately, and then use some linear maps
to inter-connect the two subsystems. We will not give the detailed description for
the system matrices (A, B, C, D) because they consume too much space; and similar
derivations exist in the literature (Battaini et al, 2000). For the AMD subsystem we
will choose, for each AMD, relative (w.r.t. the supporting floor) displacement xai
and velocity xai as the states, relative displacement xai and output force Fi to the
structure as the outputs, the displacement command ui to the PD-controller of the
AMD as control input, and the absolute acceleration of the supporting floor xgi as
the disturbance input. This gives the state space model

xa = Aa xa + Ba ua + Ea fa (1)
ya = Ca xa + Da ua (2)

where xa = [xa1 , xa1 , xa2 , xa2 ]T , ya = [xa1 , F1 , xa2 , F2 ]T , ua = [u1 , u2 ]T , and fa =

[xg1 , xg2 ]T . Note that by explicitly defining xgi as a disturbance source to the AMD,
the effect of the structural dynamics to that of the AMD becomes obvious. For the
structure subsystem, we will use the usual physical space model by choosing the
relative (w.r.t. the shaking table) displacement xi and velocity xi of each floor as

2
states, the absolute acceleration of each floor xia as an output, the control force (to
be produced by the AMD) Fi as control input, and the absolute acceleration of the
shaking table xg as the disturbance input. We have

xb = Ab xb + Bb ub + Eb fb (3)
yb = Cb xb + Db ub + Gb fb (4)

where xb = [x1 , x2 , x3 , x1 , x2 , x3 ]T , yb = [x1a , x2a , x3a ]T , ub = [F1 , F2 , F3 ]T , and

fb = xg . By combining equations (1)(4) and using the relations

ub = Tba ya (5)
fa = Tab yb (6)

we develop the AMD-Building state space model

x = Ax + Bu + Ef (7)
y = Cx + Du + Gf (8)

where x = [xTb , xTa ]T , y = [ybT , xa1 , xa2 ]T , u = ua , and f = xg . We will install

AMD #1 on the third floor, and AMD #2 on the first floor, which gives

" # 0 0 0 1
0 0 1
Tab = , Tba = 0 0 0 0 (9)
1 0 0
0 1 0 0

3. Frequency Domain System Identification

The identification of a state space model from frequency domain data proceeds as
follows. First the system is excited by band-limited white noise (bandwidth = 5hz)
from each individual input channel, and the frequency response function (FRF) is
measured by a Siglab spectrum analyzer. The polynomial matrix fraction curve-
fitting technique is then applied to estimate the transfer function matrix of the system,
from which the Markov parameters are calculated. Finally the state space model is
obtained by the ERA method (Juang 1994) using Hankel matrix decomposition.
To curve-fit the FRF data, the transfer function matrix is parameterized in the
matrix fraction description

G(z 1 ) = Q1 (z 1 )R(z 1 ) (10)

where
Q(z 1 ) = I + Q1 z 1 + Q2 z 2 + + Qq z q
R(z 1 ) = R0 + R1 z 1 + R2 z 2 + + Rp z p
are polynomial matrices, with I being the identity matrix, and where Q1 , . . . , Qq and
R0 , R1 , . . . , Rp are the observer Markov parameters (Juang 1994). Here, without loss
of generality, we will assume p = q. To solve for Qi and Ri from the estimated FRF

3
data, pre-multiply Eq. (10) by Q(z 1 ) and substitute the expressions for Q(z 1 ) and
R(z 1 ); we have
G(z 1 ) = Q1 G(z 1 )z 1 Qp G(z 1 )z p + R0 + R1 z 1 + + Rp z p (11)
There are altogether l (which is the number of the frequency points) matrix linear
equations in the form of Eq. (11), with 2p+1 unknowns. Stacking up these equations,
the unknown observer Markov parameters can be solved in the least-squares sense.
Once (11) is solved, the system Markov parameters Y0 , Y1 , Y2 , . . ., can be deter-
mined from p ! ! p
X
X X
Qi z i Yi z i = Ri z i (12)
i=0 i=0 i=0
by the following iterative calculations starting from Y0 = R0 :
( P
Rk ki=1 Qi Yki, for k = 1, . . . , p
Yk = P (13)
pi=1 Qi Yki, for k = p + 1, . . . ,
To solve for a state space model (A, B, C, D) using the ERA method, first form
the generalized Hankel matrices

Yk Yk+1 . . . Yk+1

Yk+1 Yk+2 . . . Yk+
H(k 1) =
.. .. .. ..
(14)
. . . .
Yk+1 Yk+ . . . Yk++2
Note that in general, and are chosen to be the smallest numbers such that H(k)
has as large row and column ranks as possible. Additional suggestions to determine
their optimal values are given in (Juang 1994). Let the singular value decomposition
of H(0) be H(0) = UV T , and let n denote the point where the singular values have
the largest drop of magnitude. Then H(0) can be approximated by
H(0) Un n VnT (15)
where Un and Vn are the first n columns of U and V respectively, and n is the
diagonal matrix containing the largest n singular values of H(0). Finally, an n-th
order state space realization (A, B, C, D) can be calculated by
1 1 1 1
A = n 2 UnT H(1)Vn n 2 , B = n2 VnT Er , C = Em
T
Un n2 , D = Y0 (16)
T
where Er and Em are the elementary matrices that pick out the first r (the number
of system inputs) columns and first m (the number of system outputs) rows of their
multiplicands respectively.
The above procedure is applied to solve for a discrete-time state space model from
the measured FRF data. The adjustable parameters are designed as p = q = 8 in
(10), = 12, = 20 in (14), and n = 10 in (15) which coincides with the order of
the analytical model. The magnitude frequency response of the identified model is
compared to the FRF data in Figure 2. To conclude this section, we note that for the
purpose of control design, the identified model has been converted to an equivalent
(in the sense of zero-order hold) design model in the continuous-time domain.

4
4. Modal Space LQG Control Design
In this section, we will design an LQG controller for the experimental system in the
balanced modal space (Gawronski 1998). First the design model is transformed into
the (input-output) balanced modal representation xm =P 1x and (Am , Bm , Cm , Dm ) =
(P 1 AP, P 1B, CP, D), which has the following properties
T T
Am = diag(Ami ), Bm = [ Bm1 , . . . , Bm T
n ] ,
2
Cm = [ Cm1 , , Cm n2 ] (17)

with " #
i i i
Ami = , ||Bmi ||F = ||Cmi ||F (18)
i i i
Here || ||F denotes the Frobenius norm. In these coordinates, the following state
performance weight Qc , control effort weight Rc , process noise covariance Qe , and
measurement noise covariance Re are used:

Qc = diag(s1 , s1 , s2 , s2 , s3 , s3 , a1 , a1 , a2 , a2 ), Rc = diag(1, 1) (19)

Qe = 25, Re = diag(10, 10, 10) (20)

where s1 = 30, s2 = 15, s3 = 15 are the weights for the structure modes (from low
to high frequencies), and a1 = 10, a2 = 5 are the weights for the third and first floor
AMD modes. These parameters are adjusted to fully utilize the AMD track-length.
Note that the AMD displacement measurements are not included in the feedback
loop, because experimentally they make the closed-loop system more susceptible to
instability. Now the controller gain Kc and the observer gain Ke are calculated by
the Matlab (1997) routines lqr.m and lqew.m; and the LQG controller is implemented
by Simulink blocks. The closed-loop results are presented in the next section.

5. Experimental Results and Discussion

The control performance is evaluated by comparing the controlled and uncontrolled
system frequency response at the same disturbance excitation level. In the uncon-
trolled tests, we simply fix the AMDs on their tracks. The results are presented in
Figure 3, with red-solid lines for the controlled case, and blue-dotted lines for the
uncontrolled case. It is observed that, for the first and second structure modes, more
than 10 db reduction has been achieved in all three floor acceleration outputs. And
the third mode is also adequately damped in the closed loop frequency response.
The algorithms for system identification and control design discussed in this paper
really constitute a simple and efficient solution procedure to this type of structural
control experiment. However, detailed studies of the results presented so far re-
veal some interesting problems. First observe that the identified model in Figure 2
has relatively poor match in the very low frequency range (before the first mode).
To understand this problem, the transfer functions of the analytical model (7)-(8)
are calculated, which reveal that there are four zeros for the structure acceleration

There is, in fact, an approximately linear relation between the amount of damping that can be
added to the system and the AMD track-length, see (Yang et al, 1999).

5
 Xgddot > X3ddot Xgddot > X2ddot Xgddot > X1ddot

20 20 20
Magnitude (dB)

0 0 0

20 20 20

40 40 40
0 2 4 0 2 4 0 2 4
Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz) Frequency (Hz)

Figure 3: Comparison between Controlled and Uncontrolled FRF

measurements at zero frequency when the system is excited by the AMD command
inputs. It is a matter of fact that low signal-to-noise ratio is often associated with
the existence of zeros in the frequency neighborhood. And this makes it beneficial
to pre-specify the location of the zeros and to incorporate this information into the
identification algorithm. This topic will be fully discussed in Jin et al (2000a). An-
other interesting observation is that the second and third resonant frequencies of the
controlled-structure have been unexpectedly increased compared to that of the un-
controlled case, see Figure 3. This suggests that, among other things, the model
obtained in the open-loop tests may not accurately describe the system behavior in
the closed-loop. In Jin et al (2000b), we will present an approach for closed-loop
identification and control re-design, which leads to some satisfactory results.

Reference
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Structural Control, ASCE Journal of Engineering Mechanics, Vol 126, No 2, Page
140-148.
Gawronski W. (1998), Dynamics and Control of Structures, Springer.
Jin G., Sain M.K., and Spencer Jr. B.F. (2000a), Frequency Domain System Identifi-
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Control Conference.
Jin G., Sain M.K., and Spencer Jr. B.F. (2000b), Closed-Loop Identification and
Control Re-design: An Experimental Structural Control Example, to appear in Proc.
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