| Structural control techniques are an alternative approach to protect structures from natural hazards that continue to plague our nation's infrastructure. Due to their onboard sensing, communication, and computational capabilities, wireless smart sensors, which have become popular for structural health monitoring applications, are an attractive option for implementing structural control systems. However, wireless smart sensors pose unique challenges, such as communication latency and unreliable communication, which make common centralized control systems over wireless networks less feasible. Previous research has implemented wireless structural control using decentralized approaches on semi-active control systems; however, these implementations are less sensitive to the challenges related to wireless structural control, because semi-active control systems are inherently stable. On the other hand, wireless active control systems require the entire control system, from hardware selection to control design, to deal with these challenges to limit delays and error and to ensure a stable system. Therefore, this research addresses all the elements of wireless active control design to overcome these challenges. Low-latency data acquisition and actuation hardware tailored for control limits any inherent delay due to the sensing and control components. Real-time wireless data acquisition and control strategies are implemented within the existing software framework. The approach for digital control design preserves stability and control performance in the presence of delays and at slow sampling rates. The wireless control system is validated on an actively controlled multi-story, small-scale test structure suitable for different levels of control decentralization. The result of this research is the realization of a decentralized wireless active structural control system that overcomes the challenges posed by wireless smart sensors to realize their potential for structural control. |
