Self-Tuning Fuzzy Control for Seismic Protection of Smart Base-Isolated Buildings Subjected to Pulse-Type Near-Fault Earthquakes

Pulse-type near-fault earthquakes have obvious long-duration pulses, so they can cause large deformation in a base-isolated system in contrast to non-pulse-type near-fault and far-field earthquakes. This paper proposes a novel self-tuning fuzzy logic control strategy for seismic protection of a base-isolated system, which can operate the control force of the piezoelectric friction damper against different types of earthquakes. This control strategy employs a hierarchic control algorithm, in which a higher-level supervisory fuzzy controller is implemented to adjust the input normalization factors and output scaling factor, while a sub-level fuzzy controller effectively determines the command voltage of the piezoelectric friction damper according to current level of earthquakes. The efficiency of the proposed control strategy is also compared with uncontrolled and maximum passive cases. Numerical results reveal that the novel fuzzy logic control strategy can effectively reduce the isolation system deformations without the loss of potential advantages of base-isolated system.