Mitigating excessive vibration of civil engineering structures using various types of devices has been a conspicuous research topic in the past few decades. Some devices, such as electromagnetic transducers, which have a capability of exerting control forces while simultaneously harvesting energy, have been proposed recently. These devices make possible a self-regenerative system that can semi-actively mitigate structural vibration without the need of external energy. Integrating mechanical, electrical components, and control algorithms, these devices open up a new research domain that needs to be addressed. In this study, the feasibility of using an actor-critic based reinforcement learning control algorithm for simultaneous vibration control and energy harvesting for a civil engineering structure is investigated. The actor-critic based reinforcement learning control algorithm is a real-time, model-free adaptive technique that can adjust the controller parameters based on observations and reward signals without knowing the system characteristics. It is suitable for the control of a partially known nonlinear system with uncertain parameters. The feasibility of implementing this algorithm on a building structure equipped with an electromagnetic damper will be investigated in this study. Issues related to the modelling of learning algorithm, initialization and convergence will be presented and discussed.
The increasing worldwide efforts in securing renewable energy sources increase incentive for civil engineers to
investigate whether the kinetic energy associated with the vibration of larger-scale structures can be harvested. Such a
research remains challenging and incomplete despite that hundreds of related articles have been published in the last
decade. Base isolation is one of the most popular means of protecting a civil engineering structure against earthquake
forces. Seismic isolation hinges on the decoupling of the structure from the shaking ground, hence protecting the
structure from stress and damage during an earthquake excitation. The low stiffness isolator inserted between the
structure and the ground dominates the response leading to a structural system of longer vibration period. As a
consequence of this period shift, the spectral acceleration is reduced, but higher response displacements are produced. To
mitigate this side effect, usually isolators are combined with the use of additional energy dissipation. In this study, the
feasibility of scavenging the need-to-be dissipated energy from the isolator installed in a seismically isolated bridge
using an electromagnetic (EM) energy harvester is investigated. The EM energy harvester consists of an energy
harvesting circuit and a capacitor for energy storage. A mathematical model for this proposed EM energy harvester is
developed and implemented on an idealized base-isolated single-degree-of-freedom system. The effect of having this
EM energy harvester on the performance of this seismic isolated system is analyzed and discussed. The potential of
installing such an EM energy harvester on a seismically isolated bridge is also addressed.
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