Implementation of a closed-loop structural control system using wireless sensor networks

Abstract

Wireless sensor networks have rapidly matured in recent years to offer data acquisition capabilities on par with those of traditional tethered data acquisition systems. Entire structural monitoring systems assembled from wireless sensors have proven to be low cost, easy to install, and accurate. However, the functionality of wireless sensors can be further extended to include actuation capabilities. Wireless sensors capable of actuating a structure could serve as building blocks of future generations of structural control systems. In this study, a wireless sensor prototype capable of data acquisition, computational analysis and actuation is proposed for use in a real‐time structural control system. The performance of a wireless control system is illustrated using a full‐scale structure controlled by a semi‐active magnetorheological (MR) damper and a network of wireless sensors. One wireless sensor designated as a controller automates the task of collecting state data, calculating control forces, and issuing commands to the MR damper, all in real time. Additional wireless sensors are installed to measure the acceleration and velocity response of each system degree of freedom. Base motion is applied to the structure to simulate seismic excitations while the wireless control system mitigates inter‐storey drift response of the structure. An optimal linear quadratic regulation solution is formulated for embedment within the computational cores of the wireless sensors. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Decentralized civil structural control using real-time wireless sensing and embedded computing

“…Rarely experiencing data losses during the experiments, our prototype wireless sensor network proves to be robust (as reported by Lynch et al (2006c), data losses less than 2% are experienced).…”

“…The same test structure has been used in a previous wireless control study in which one MR damper is installed for closed-loop control (Lynch et al 2006c). Both a baseline wired control system and a wireless sensing and control system are employed to implement the real-time feedback control of a 3-story steel frame instrumented with three MR dampers.…”

Realistic case studies of wireless structural control

“…While early efforts developed control algorithms and prototype wireless control systems [22,32,33], all the previous experiments were performed on small-scale lab structures. In the lab settings, wireless sensors within a single hop and experience no data loss due to physical proximity of the devices.…”

emi-decentralized Strategies in Structural Vibration Control

“…However, to improve the communications robustness and to achieve higher sampling frequencies in the real-time control operation, the controllers need to operate using local information provided by neighboring sensors. Consequently, a decentralized control approach is required for a realistic treatment of Wireless Networked Control Systems (WNCS) Lynch et al, 2008;Swartz and Lynch, 2009;Wang et al, 2006Wang et al, , 2009Wang, 2011). In this context, the multioverlapping approach can be specially suitable for large-scale WNCS, reducing the design and operation computational effort and providing semi-decentralized controllers which satisfy the information exchange constraints Rossell et al, 2010).…”