Proceedings of the American Control Conference

Albuquerque, New Mexico June 1997

o
0-7ao3-3a32-41971$io.00 I997 AACC

USING TENSORS TO TRACK EARTHQUAKES

O N HYDRAULIC SHAKER TABLES
Hongliang Dai
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
Michael K. Sain
Department of Electrical Engineering
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
B. F. Spencer, J r .
Department of Civil Engineering and Geological Sciences
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

Abstract

This paper presents a new method to design nonlin-

ear, earthquake-tracking controls on the shaker table
at the University of Notre Dame's Structural Dynam-
ics and Control/ Earthquake Engineering Laboratory,
by using symmetric tensor formulations of optimal
nonlinear regulator design techniques. By means of
a closed loop representation for the nonlinear opti-
mal regulator problem, a compact and novel form of
nonlinear regulator solution is obtained. Computer
simulations have shown that the nonlinear controller
provides much smaller tracking error on the shaker ta-
ble than the linear controller, when mismatched refer-
ence command signals are used. For paired reference
command signals, computed off-line in advance by
direct inverse computation methods, both simulation
and experimental results show that linear and nonlin-
ear control can be used for tracking control of shaker
table to a set of desired earthquake signals without
redesigning the feedback loop control.
1. The Shaker Table and Servo Valve
A picture of the shaker table mounted with a simu-
lated building is shown in Figure 1. The shaker table
consists of a hydraulic actuator and servo valve as-
sembly, which is mounted on the top of the right side
of the reaction mass, a d a digital control system.
The reaction mass measures 30 x 60 x 96in3 and is a
sand-filled steel box sitting on 4 air spring isolators.
The fundamental frequency of the reaction mass/air
spring isolator is 1.5Hz. Hydraulic power unit for
the shaker table is a 26gpm gear pump with nomi-
nal supply pressure of 3OOOpsi. The pump is driven
by a 60amp, 50HP electric motor. To stabilize the
supply pressure t o the control unit, a 2.5 gallon hy-
Figure 1: Shaker Table and Tested Building
draulic accumulator is attached to the 3OOOpsi supply
line to the actuator. The digital control system is a
TMS320C30-based Real-'Time Digital Signal Proces-
sor (RTDSP) board equipped with a 80486DX33 P C
as the interface and high speed six A/D input and
four D/A output channels. The sliding table is con-
trolled by the hydraulic actuator/servo-valve aad has
a maximum displacement of f a i n , maximum velocity
of f35 in/sec and maximum acceleration f 4 g s with
a 1000 lb test load. The operational frequency range
of the shaker table is 0 - 50 Hz[l]. The feedback
signals, displacement and acceleration of the sliding
table, are sensed by an LVDT and an accelerometer,
respectively. After sensing and conditioning of the
signals through a multi-channel analog amplifier, the
digital control system sends a command signal to the
electromagnetic servo valve according to the control
algorithm to adjust the movement of the sliding ta-
ble. A schematic diagram of servo-valve/hydraulic
actuator is shown in Figure 2.

1
 Flexure tUbe
Coil 8 Armature
I
Table 1: System Constants
Constant Description
A, = 3.4238 in2 Surface area of piston
m = 1.1775 Mass of piston and attached
platform
= 100 9 Damping coefficient
Fsc = 5.0 lb Seal friction force
y = 10000 Seal function constant
w = 0.406 in Width of orifice opening
Cd = 0.61 Fluid flow coefficient
p s = 1000 % Supply pressure
lbZn Return pressure
pr = 25
- *, p = 0.000078
p = 200,000 3
Density of hydraulic fluid
Bulk modulus of hydraulic fluid
Figure 2: Servovalve Structure Re = 101 R Resistance of servovalve coils
Le = 0.05 H Inductance of servovalve coils
2. Mathematical Model 01 = 44 Modeled resistance in spool
movement
Let XI,x2, and x3 be the displacement, velocity and ff2 = 0.8 am;n,ec Modeled inductance in spool
acceleration of the working piston, then we have the movement
natural relationship $1 = 2 2 and x 2 = 2 3 . Based on kl = 3.12307 Input gain
three assumptions [3, p.161, the relation of the pres- IC2 = 5.34045 Feedback gain
sures between left and right chambers of the working
piston is governed by l j , = -lj,(Vo - A,xl)/(K + Centro Vertical, as desired reference acceleration can-
+ +
A , q ) or p, ps = P, P,, where V, is the initial didates. The first two acceleration data has a band-
chamber volume with the working piston at the center width around 20 Hz, and the third acceleration data
position. Define the load pressure Ap = pa -ps; then have a bandwidth of about 40 Hz. To unify and re-
the relationship between the acceleration and the load duce the time intervals of the earthquake accelera-
pressure is given by 2 3 = (A,Ap - <zZ)/m.By elimi- tion data, a cubic spline interpretation is applied to
nating the load pressure Ap, the nonlinear model for the three earthquake acceleration data so that a more
the shaker table has three more equations and one smooth data could be used to further integration and
switching surface, with zero initial conditions. The differentiation. A scaling of both the acceleration
+
first two additional expressions are for ks $ 2 3 , for magnitude and the time is made such that the three
the cases x 5 2 0, and 2 5 < 0; earthquake acceleration data and the corresponding
reference signals are compatible for the practical uses.
Let Ct and C, be the scaling factors of the time and
the acceleration magnitude, respectively. Then the
scaled acceleration data is given by t,,, = C t t o l d and
a n e w = C m a o l d , where sold is the magnitude of the
original acceleration data with respect to the original
time t o l d , and anew is the magnitude of scaled accel-
eration data with respect to scaled time t,,,. The
scaled and smoothed three earthquake acceleration
histories are shown in Figure 3.
1 01
x5 = -24 - -x5
0 2 0 2

where P,, = P, - P,, x 4 and x 5 are the servo valve

armature current and the position of the servo-spool,
respectively. Table 1 provides a description of all the
system constants and their assigned values.
3. Tracking Earthquakes
We choose three earthquake acceleration data: 1934
El Centro South, 1934 El Centro West and 1940 El
4. Controller Architecture
Consider a nonlinear system as shown in Figure 4.
Let T be the reference signal, defined by r = [ Z T U ~ ] ' .
It can be seen that there are two tasks we have to deal
with: reference command signal r and the feedback
control gain IC(.).

2
 (a) 1934 El Centro South

Figure 4: Nonlinear Tracking

I
1 0 1z
TI--. <s-oo"d-,

(b) 1934 El Centro West and

with terminal condition V ( t f ~

, ( t f= ) )M [ z ( t f ) ]By
.
using a closed-loop system representation, we have
i = Cp2akzk and L[z,k(z,t),t] = CE2P~zk,
Tim-. <s-aone-,
1 0
I
1P where z - z v - .. V x (k factor) is the k-th symmetric
tensor power of z. The multimatrices a k and P k are
(c) 1940 El Centro Vertical defined by

Figure 3: Desired Accelerations

4.1. Reference Command Design
Instead of using open-loop optimization, we use a di-
rect inverse computation method to solve for the ref-
erence command signal U , for a given desired refer-
ence earthquake signal. The simulation results for the i=2 j = 1
nonlinear tracking control of the shaker table indicate
that this computational approach is successful. The which are nonlinear feedback system matrices and k-
computation time for the reference command signal th weight matrices corresponding to the k-th sym-
U,, shown in Figure 5, is only about 15 seconds.
metric tensor power of z. For k > 2 , we have that
Vk + iK(Ii-' V a k - ( i - l ) ) , when added to

4.2. Feedback Gain Design

Consider a nonlinear system described by k =
2V2(I V & - I ) + P k + Qo,,i:,, (8)
f (z,u,t),, with z(to) = 20,where z E R" and becomes equal to zero, where p k is defined to be
U E R". Define a cost functional by

Pk = Pk + 2V2(I V A o ~ k k - 1 -) &o,&Z,. (9)

J ( z 0 , U ,t o ) = M[a:(tf)I + /to
tt
L ( z ,U , w. (3) For k > 2 , the optimal control gain matrices -2kk-1
are given by:
The optimal control is denoted as u(t) = k ( t , z ( t ) ) . k
Define the optimal performance function V ( t ,z) to be v dk-(i-l)) + &] v Iu(Ik-' v Qcf),
[ civi(l(i-l)
m i n v E U J ( t , z , u ) .If we denote u * ( t , z )by U * , then i=2
sufficient conditions for the optimal control are [ 2 , pp. (10)

3
 signals

Q4,O = [I1 02." 136 037 ' * * 156 057 " * 0701 j

(14)
where l i or O i represents the i-th element of the ma-
+
trix, and Qi,j = 0, V ( i j ) = 4, i , j = 0,1, * . * , 4 ,
W I except Q 4 0 given above, such that Q40x: = xCsl +
x& + x&. The differences among the simulation re-
1 0 12
TIm-- <S-PPnd*>

(a) 1934 El Centro South sponses of linear and 3rd-order controls are not signif-
icant both in time and frequency domains. It can be
seen from the simulation results that the open-loop
response corresponding to reference command signal
U,, computed by inverse method, decreases the stan-
dard deviation of acceleration tracking error about
95% of the standard deviation of the reference state
z,, for both 1934 El Centro South and 1934 El Centro
West cases, 86.87% for the case of 1940 El Centro Vcr-
tical. The linear optimal control decreases the stan-
(b) 1934 El Centro West dard deviation of acceleration tracking error about
30% of the standard deviation of open-loop acceler-
ation tracking error in three cases. The 3rd-order
optimal control decreases the standard deviation of
acceleration tracking error about 2% of the standard
deviation of linear optimal control, for both 1934 El
Centro South and 1934 El Centro West cases, and
only 0.35% for the case of 1940 El Centro Vertical.
With a paired reference command signal { u r , x r } ,
both linear and nonlinear tracking controls for the
shaker table have less tracking errors, comparing with
tracking errors in the case of mismatching between
the elements of command signal, i.e. only one refer-
Figure 5 : Reference Command Signals ence command signal z, being used. To demonstrate
where Qif denotes the symmetric tensor inverse of the advantage of nonlinear controller over linear con-
Q0.2,and is defined by troller for the tracking control of the shaker table, set
=
u r ( t ) 0 for all t 2 0, so that closed-loop nonlinear
k i system for the shaker table has a potential to move
outside the linear region. The time responses of the
acceleration tracking errors for the case of mismatch-
ing between of the elements of the command signal
with U, 0 are shown in Figure 6. The variances
5 . Controller Simulation for desired acceleration (1934 El Centro West), cor-
responding linear and nonlinear acceleration tracking
The nonlinear cost functional is chosen in the form errors are 14.2593, 1.0283 and 0.0294, respectively, as

J= 1 03

[Qz,nx2 + Qo,zu2 + Q4,0x4] dt, (12)

shown in Figure 6. The standard deviations for the
desired acceleration corresponding linear and nonlin-
ear tracking errors are 3.7762, 1.0140 and 0.1716, re-
where the quadratic weighting matrices are chosen spectively. So the nonlinear control reduces the vari-
such that Q o , ~= 10000, and ance of the tracking error by 83.08% and standard
deviation by 97.14% with respect to the variance and
Q2,0= [l 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1IlXl5, standard deviation of linear tracking error, respec-
(13) tively.

which is corresponding to the identity matrix in the 6. Experimental Results

quadratic form of Q 2 , 0 2 . For the second order and
third order optimal controls, we choose the follow- This section presents some experimental results for
ing weighting matrices based on the 20Hz bandwidth the tracking control of the shaker table based on

4
 MeasuredAccelerations of Shake Table (elc4Ov)
150
I

c-
100 i .
p 50
8
e o
8 -=
-4 E -50

-100
I ,
2 4 6 6 io 12 14
Time (sec.)
(a) Linear Control

20
r8
e o
5
-20

2.b5 2:1 2.;5 2:2 2.;5 213 2.k 2:4 2.45 215
I , I
10 1-
Time (sec.)
TI,”. <.-oo”dr,

(b) Nonlinear Control Figure 7: Acceleration Responses of Shake Table (1940

El Centro Vertical)

Figure 6: Acceleration Tracking Errors (1934 El Centro
West, U? E 0)
the polynomialized model of the shaker table with a
paired reference command signal. For the case of mis-
matching between the elements of the desired com-
mand signal, i.e. ur(t)G 0 for all t 1: 0, a practical
state estimator has t o be designed and implemented
so that we can demonstrate the advantage of nonlin-
ear control over linear control experimentally. There
are two desired acceleration signals are used for the
experiments of the tracking control of the shaker ta-
ble: 1934 El Centro West and 1940 El Centro Verti-
cal. Later has a wider frequency range for the desired
acceleration spectrum. The acceleration tracking re-
sponses and acceleration tracking errors are shown
in Figure 7. Two solid lines are desired and open-
loop acceleration responses of the shaker table. There
is some time shifting for measured open-loop, linear
and nonlinear controlled acceleration responses of the
shaker table due to sampling trig error when using the
desired displacement signal as measurement starting
trig for each conducted experiment with respect to
same desired acceleration signal. The standard devi-
ations of acceleration tracking errors for open-loop,
linear and nonlinear control are 6.2057, 7.3188 and
7.4908, respectively, corresponding to the standard
deviations for the measured desired acceleration sig-
nals are 8.0190, 8.0187 and 8.0187.
Engineering at the University of Notre Dame, and in
part by the Department of Electrical Engineering at
the University of Notre Dame.
References
[l] B. F. Spencer, M. K. Sain, S. J. Dyke, and
P. Quast, “Acceleration Feedback Control Strategies
for Aseismic Protector,” in Proceedings of the 1993
American Control Conference, pp. 1317-1321, June
1993.
[2] J. A. O’Sullivan, Nonlinear Optimal Regulation
by Polynomic Approximation Methods. Ph.D. Disser-
tation, Department of Electrical and Computer Sci-
ence Engineering, University of Notre Dame, May
1986.
[3] D. P. Newell, “Modeling and Control of a Non-
linear, Hydraulic Based Seismic Simulator,” M.S.
Thesis, Department of Electrical Engineering, Uni-
versity of Notre Dame, November 1993.
[4] M. Vidyasagar, Nonlinear Systems Analysis.
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, sec-
ond ed., 1993.
[5] Hongliang Dai, Investigations o n the Control
of a Hydraulic Shaker Table and of Magnetorheologi-
cal Dampers f o r Seismic Response Reduction. Ph.D.
Dissertation, Department of Electrical and Computer
Science Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Au-
gust 1996.

7. Acknowledgements

This work has been supported in part by the National

Science Foundation, under Grant CMS95-28083, in
part by the Frank M. Freimann Chair in Electrical