Pulse Control of Structural and Mechanical Systems

The feasibility of using openloop adaptive online pulse control is considered for limiting the response of large linear multi-degree-of-freedom systems subjected to general dynamic loading environments. Pulses of short durations are used to control the system when the system response exceeds a given threshold level. The pulse magnitudes are obtained in closed form, leading to large computational efficiencies when compared with optimal control theoretic methods. The technique is illustrated for a structural system subjected to earthquake-like base excitations.