Innovative technology for seismic response reduction of tall buildings with podium structures

Structural controf technology offers many new ways to proted structures from naturol hazards. A comprehensive experimental Investigation was carried out in The Hong Kong Polytechnic University to apply multiple magnetorheological (MR) dampers to connect podium structures to tall buildingsfar preventing seismic damage due to sudden change of lateral stiffness and mass. A slender 12-storey building madel and a relatively stiff 3-storey bUilding model were construded to represent a tall building and a podium strudure respectively. MR dampers were used to link the 3-storey building to the 12storey building at each of the bottom three storeys. The two buildings without any connedlon and with a rigid connedian weref/rst tested under scaled EI Centro 1940 N-S ground motion. A test was then performed on the two buildings connected by MR dampers manipulated by a semi-adive logic control algorithm. Finally, reliability of the seml-adive cantrol system and robustness of the semi-adive logic control algorithm were experimentally Investigated. The experimental results have demonstrated that the multiple MR dampers with the semi-adive logic control algorithm can achieve a significant redudion in seismic responses Of both buildings with very small power requirement. The proposed semi-adive control system is of highly reliable and robust.