Control of Traffic-Induced Vibrations of Elevated Urban Highways

Abstract: This paper studies the active control of traffic-induced vibrations of elevated highway bridges. In order to suppress the vibration, an active control device (AMD or ATMD) is installed beneath the bridge girder at the center. Three different feedback control algorithms are studied, depending on different levels of vehicle information used in control design, namely, (1) full-state feedback, (2) output feedback, and (3) constant-gain output feedback. The gains of the algorithms 1 and 2 are time-varying, while the gain of algorithm 3 is time-invariant. The numerical examples of bridge-control system responses, subjected to the moving vehicle, are computed. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the active control in reducing the bridge responses. However, for the control design, the information of passing vehicles is found to be almost unnecessary for inclusion in the feedback, although for the response analysis, it is known that the vehicles form an essential part that should be incorporated in the system dynamic model. It is also found that the control performance of ATMD is higher than that of AMD. Finally, based on the understanding of the control characteristic, a new control concept is proposed. It is shown that the ATMD's performance can be further improved by the proposed control.