| A novel structural health monitoring and control system is developed and proposed to protect our civil infrastructures. The main focus of this research will be addressed in two related areas: a hybrid damage detection system with adaptive control and a bio-inspired control system.;A hybrid method of detecting and locating structural damages in beams, columns or joints of a frame structure is developed in this research. The proposed global damage detection method is combined with a local damage identification method using sonic infrared imaging to update the computational structural model for continuous structural monitoring and to improve the control performance. Results from numerical simulations indicate that the adaptive control strategy based on model updating improves the control performance.;In order to protect civil structures during an earthquake event, a passive actuator inspired by an energy dispersion mechanism called "Sacrificial Bonds and Hidden Length", which is found in some biological systems, such as abalone shells and bones, has been proposed. Sacrificial bonds and hidden length can substantially increase the stiffness and enhance energy dissipation in the constituent molecules of abalone shells and bone. Having been inspired by the usefulness and effectiveness of such a mechanism, which has evolved over millions of years and countless cycles of evolutions, the conceptual underpinnings of this mechanism are applied to construct a bio-inspired passive actuator which is then used for structural control. In order to optimize the bio-inspired passive actuator, an optimization method utilizing the Force-Displacement-Velocity (FDV) plots based on Linear Quadratic Regulator (LQR) control as well as the Pareto optimal surfaces is proposed. The illustrative examples, conducted by numerical simulation with experimental validation, suggest that the bio-inspired passive actuator based on sacrificial bonds and hidden length may be comparable in performance to state-of-the-art semi-active actuators, and it can be more adaptive to different earthquakes. Illustrative examples also show that the placement of multiple bio-inspired actuators can improve the control performance. |
