Copyright © 2012 Francisco Palacios-Quiñonero et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

A mathematical model to compute the overall vibrational response of connected multistructure mechanical systems is presented. Using the proposed model, structural vibration control strategies for seismic protection of multibuilding systems can be efficiently designed. Particular attention is paid to the design of control configurations that combine passive interbuilding dampers with local feedback control systems implemented in the buildings. These hybrid active-passive control strategies possess the good properties of passive control systems and also have the high-performance characteristics of active control systems. Moreover, active-passive control configurations can be properly designed for multibuilding systems requiring different levels of seismic protection and are also remarkably robust against failures in the local feedback control systems. The application of the main ideas is illustrated by means of a three-building system, and numerical simulations are conducted to assess the performance of the proposed structural vibration control strategies.