Wind-Induced Response Control of a Television Transmission Tower by Piezoelectric Semi-Active Friction Dampers

Abstract

To be a typical flexible structure with small damping, a high-rise television (TV) transmission tower is sensitive to wind excitations. The response control of TV transmission towers by semi-active friction dampers under strong external excitations is still very limited and the parametric study on control performance has not been systematically investigated. To this end, the semi-active control of a wind-excited TV transmission tower by piezoelectric friction dampers is conducted in this study. A fine finite element (FE) model of a real TV transmission tower is constructed and then a two-dimensional (2D) dynamic model is also established. The analytical model of a semi-active friction damper based on piezoelectric actuators is then established with damper stiffness considered. The equations of motion of the tower with friction dampers are then established. The local feedback control algorithm based on nonlinear Reid damping mechanisms is used to command piezoelectric friction dampers for wind-excited towers. A high-rise TV transmission tower in China is used to investigate the validity of the proposed semi-active control approach and compared with that of passive control. Furthermore, a detailed parametric investigation is conducted to examine the influence of gain coefficient, damper stiffness, hysteresis loops, damper force, and wind loading intensity on control efficacy. The analytical results indicate that piezoelectric friction dampers with optimal parameters are beneficial to the vibration mitigation of TV transmission towers under different wind loading intensities.