Structural sparsity in control design of active and semi-active systems

Civil building structures equipped with active or semi-active control devices help mitigate structural damages in the presence of any seismic excitation. These advanced mitigation systems require additional devices such as sensors, actuators, and communication systems that increase issues related to energy consumption, measurement errors, and costs of implementation. In this work, we propose a methodology based on the concept of structural sparsity to induce a sparse pattern in the feedback control system that takes into account prior information on the inherent relationship between the variables of the controller. This methodology can potentially decrease the implementation costs while keeping a suitable performance of the structure when subjected to external disturbances. We show through mathematical analyses and simulation results the benefits of using the proposed methodology in both active and semi-active systems.