Adaptive fuzzy controller for active tuned mass damper of a benchmark tall building subjected to seismic and wind loads Mehdi Soleymani 1 * and Masoud Khodadadi 2 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arak University, Arak, Iran 2 Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arak University, Arak, Iran SUMMARY Active tuned mass dampers (ATMDs) are one of the most effective solutions for mitigation of destructive effects of earthquakes and strong winds in tall buildings. In order to achieve optimal performance, these systems are designed and tuned to mitigate effect of either wind or earthquake excitation. However, due to different fre- quency contents and intensities of wind and earthquake excitations, which will cause contrasting structural modes stimulation, the ATMD designed for one of these disturbances may not work optimally for the other one. This paper addresses a methodological simulation approach for adaptive control design of ATMDs in tall buildings located in regions with high level of seismic activity and recurrent strong winds. For this purpose, a multi-objective adaptive genetic-fuzzy controller is proposed for the control of an ATMD of a benchmark 76-story building subjected to wind load and earthquake disturbances. Simulation results reveal that the optimal ATMD designed for earthquake disturbance does not work adequately for wind load disturbance and vice versa. Furthermore, the proposed adaptive controller has superior performance in suppressing base shear and inter-story drifts induced by wind load and earthquake excitations. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Received 12 July 2012; Revised 01 January 2013; Accepted 10 March 2013 KEYWORDS: fuzzy; adaptive; control; ATMD; earthquake; wind 1. INTRODUCTION Due to increasing demand for safety enhancement of tall buildings, these structures have witnessed a widespread application of energy-absorbing devices in recent years (Lu et al., 2003; Samali et al., 2004; Amini and Vahdani, 2008; Kang et al., 2010; Patil and Jangid, 2011). Tall buildings may be fortified against strong winds and ground motions by using passive, semi-active or active devices. In the passive approach of vibration suppression, no external energy is injected to the system. However, by using active and semi-active vibration absorbing systems, it is possible to control structure dynamic behavior by applying control force to structure or simply control its damping. Tuned mass damper (TMD), first introduced by Frahm (1911), is one of the oldest yet most effective dynamic vibration absorbers developed for the mitigation of wind-induced and earthquake-induced vibrations in structures. Several structures have been equipped with this technology in recent years, e. g. CN Tower in Canada and Taipei 101 in Taiwan. The principal advantages of TMD are its simplicity and low maintenance cost. Furthermore, almost any old or new building can be equipped with this system. However, as the physical parameters of TMD such as mass, stiffness and damping are normally unchangeable during its operation, it is tuned according to a certain frequency and mostly first structural mode. Therefore, performance of TMD is very sensitive to mistuning, and its optimal performance is confined to a very narrow frequency band. This problem may be more critical in tall buildings where higher modes may have considerable contribution to the structural response, especially when the structure is prone to a wide frequency range excitation such as a wideband strong ground motion. *Correspondence to: Mehdi Soleymani, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arak University, Arak 38156-8-8349, Iran. † E-mail: m-soleymani@araku.ac.ir THE STRUCTURAL DESIGN OF TALL AND SPECIAL BUILDINGS Struct. Design Tall Spec. Build. (2013) Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/tal). DOI: 10.1002/tal.1091 Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.