Summary Servo‐hydraulic actuators have been widely used for experimental studies in engineering. They can be controlled in either displacement or force control mode depending on the purpose of a test. It is necessary to control the actuators in real time when the rate‐dependency effect of a test specimen needs to be accounted for under dynamic loads. Real‐time hybrid simulation (RTHS) and effective force testing (EFT) method, which can consider the rate‐dependency effect, have been known as viable alternatives to the shake table testing method. Due to the lack of knowledge in real‐time force control, however, the structures that can be tested with RTHS and EFT are fairly limited. For instance, satisfying the force boundary condition for axially stiff members is a challenging task in RTHS, while EFT has a difficulty to be implemented for nonlinear structures. In order to resolve these issues, this paper introduces new real‐time force control methods utilizing the adaptive time series (ATS) compensator and compliance springs. Unlike existing methods, the proposed force control methods do not require the structural modeling of a test structure, making it easy to be implemented especially for nonlinear structures. The force tracking performance of the proposed methods is evaluated for a small‐scale steel mass block system with a magneto‐rheological damper subjected to various target forces. Accuracy, time delay, and resonance response of these methods are discussed along with their force control performance for an axially stiff member. Overall, a satisfactory force tracking performance was observed by using the proposed force control methods.

Base isolation system is widely used to protect important and essential buildings from seismic hazards. The use of high damping is effective in reducing the resonance effect under long-period earthquake ground motions. However, high damping increases the acceleration demand under short-period ground motions, leading to a higher risk of damage of nonstructural components. Actually, low damping is beneficial to reduce the acceleration demand under short-period ground motions, suggesting the use of adaptive damping control, that is, high damping under long-period motions and low damping under short-period motions. In order to implement this concept, a semi-actively controlled base isolation system is provided in this article along with a new control law based on the transmissibility theory. Unlike existing studies, the proposed method enables a systematic design procedure for base isolated structures with semi-active dampers, which is called the simplified design procedure in this article. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated with numerical simulations for a base isolated three-story building with magneto-rheological dampers. It was shown that the proposed system achieves a high level of performance under long-period ground motions, while maintaining the exceptional performance of a conventional base isolation system with low damping under short-period ground motions.

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