Wireless Sensing and Structural Control Strategies

Structural sensing, monitoring and control can benefit from wireless communication and embedded computing technologies in terms of installation cost and time. Our prior research has developed low-cost wireless sensing systems for structural monitoring. By incorporating an actuation signal generation module, the functionalities of wireless sensors can be extended to support structural actuation and real-time control applications. This paper discusses the laboratory experiments that are designed to assess the viability of decentralized wireless structural control using a six-story scaled structure. Commanded by wireless sensors and controllers, semi-active magnetorheological (MR) dampers are installed between neighboring floors for applying real-time feedback control forces. Multiple centralized and decentralized feedback control architectures, in combination with different sampling frequencies, are investigated. Decentralized control strategies and information processing issues related to wireless sensing and control are discussed.