Summary In this work, an active control law for base‐isolated buildings is proposed. The crucial idea comes from the observation that passive base‐isolation systems are hysteretic. Thus, an hysteretic active control strategy is designed in a way that the control force is smooth and limited by a prescribed bound. Furthermore, given a specific actuator with a physically limited maximum force and maximum rate of change, it is proven that the design parameters in the contributed control law can be chosen such that the control signal inherently satisfies the actuator constraints. Eight different ground‐acceleration time‐history records and a model of a 5‐story building are used to study and compare the performance of a passive pure friction damper alone, with the addition of the proposed active control. Numerical analysis demonstrates that our control strategy effectively mitigates base displacement and shear without an increase in superstructure drift or acceleration.

An active control strategy for base-isolated structures is proposed in this work. The key idea comes from the observation that\ud passive base isolation systems are hysteretic. Thus, an hysteresis based vibration control is designed in a way that the control force\ud is smooth and limited by a prescribed bound. A model of a three-story building is used to study and compare the efficacy of a\ud passive pure friction damper alone, with the addition of the proposed active control. We introduce a rate limiter to the actuator\ud to simulate its limited speed capacity, present in every physical actuator. Simulations demonstrate that our active control strategy\ud significantly reduces base displacements and shears without an increase in drift or accelerations.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version