Vibration Testing and Active Control of an Office Floor

Active vibration control (AVC) is considered to be a suitable technique for the mitigation of vibrations caused by human motions in buildings. This paper describes the experimental implementation of AVC on an office building in the north of England. Firstly, modal testing of the floor is described, which was carried out to establish experimentally its modal properties. These were then used in simulations of AVC on this building, where the likely reductions in response to a range of excitations were predicted. The control law used was on-off nonlinear velocity feedback control. Finally, the experimental implementation of the AVC system is described, which achieved a 50% reduction in response of the floor under pedestrian excitation.