Active Control of Transmission Tower under Stochastic Wind

Abstract

An active mass driver has been designed for installation on the upper observation deck of the 310 m Nanjing TV transmission tower in China in order to reduce the acceleration response under strong wind gusts. In this paper, the linear quadratic Gaussian (LQG), H∞, and continuous sliding mode control (CSMC) strategies have been applied to the active mass driver system based on the acceleration feedbacks. Emphasis is placed on the practical applications of LQG, H∞, and CSMC controllers, including limitations on the actuator peak force and stroke, the limited number of sensors, and noise pollution. Further, a method for modulating the control effort for the CSMC controller is proposed in this paper to satisfy the practical constraints on the actuator. A state reduced-order system has been established to design the dynamic output feedback controllers. The wind loads acting on the tower are defined by the Davenport cross-power spectral density matrix. Simulation results demonstrate that, when designed appropriately, the LQG, H∞, and CSMC control strategies are suitable for fullscale implementations of the active mass driver, and their control performances are quite remarkable.