Evaluation of the Advantage of Distributed Sensors in Smart Structure Control

Nowadays, Fiber Bragg Grating sensors(FBG) have been proven to be immune from electronic and magnetic field. By the support of FBG sensors, the advantage and feasibility of applying many distributed sensors in active control becomes an interesting subject. This paper presents the advantage of using many FBG sensors as feedback in smart structure control. To implement the concept of the smart structure, genetic algorithms(GAs) is embedded in this study to search for the optimal control gain for the control force. In order to evaluate the performances, three sets of feedback with different sensors were used. For the first set(case 1G), the 8th-floor strain sensor was selected as feedback. For the second set(case 3G), the 8th-floor, 7th-floor and 6th-floor strain sensors were chosen, and for the last set(case 8G), all strain sensors in each floor were used as feedback. The structural responses of each set under earthquake excitations were simulated and compared. According to the analysis results, increasing the amount of distributed sensors used as feedback can improve the control efficiency.