Retrofitting of a weaker building by coupling it to an adjacent stronger building using MR dampers

Among various retrofitting strategies, use of semi-active control for retrofitting a building structure has gained momentum in recent years. One of the techniques for such retrofitting is to connect a weaker building to an adjacent stronger building by semi-active devices, so that performances of a weaker building are significantly improved for seismic forces. In this paper, a ten storey weaker building is connected to an adjacent stronger building using magneto-rheological (MR) dampers, for primarily improving the performance of the weaker building in terms of displacement, drift and base shear. For this, a fuzzy logic controller is specifically developed by fuzzyfying the responses of the coupled system. The performance of the control strategy is compared with the passive-on and passive-off controls. Pounding Mitigation between the two buildings is also investigated using all three control strategies. The results show that there exists a fundamental frequency ratio between the two buildings for which maximum control of the weaker building response takes place with no penalty on the stronger building. There exists also a fundamental frequency ratio where control of the weaker building response is achieved at the expense of the amplification of the stronger building. However, coupling strategy always improves the possibility of pounding mitigation.