Parametric Sensitivity of Ground Motion Pulse Filter for Response Control of Base-Isolated Buildings

Recently, the authors have proposed ground motion pulse filters for designing effective active and semi-active controllers for base-isolated structures subject to near-field earthquakes. The controller design is realized by augmenting the structural system equation with state-space model of the pulse filter. It has been observed that the resulting controllers are capable of simultaneously reducing peak values of base displacement, superstructure drift, and accelerations of the base and the superstructure simultaneously within practical range of control forces. Since the pulse model depends on ground pulse period, ground pulse decay factor, and the pulse shape factor, a parametric sensitivity analysis is carried out to find pulse parameters for a broad range of earthquakes. It is found that the performance of the controller doesn't vary significantly if the pulse period is underestimated by 50% or overestimated by 20% with respect to the actual ground pulse period, the ground decay factor is between 0.15 and 0.35 and the pulse shape factor is between 1 and 3.