Actuator Placement in Adaptive Structures for Static Compensation – Minimizing Displacements Versus Minimizing Actuator Forces

Adaptive structures are equipped with sensors and actuators to counteract deformations caused by external loads. Previous work has shown that active control of high-rise buildings to compensate for static displacements and dampen vibrations can reduce resource consumption by half. In order to achieve this, proper placement of actuators is a delicate part in the design process of adaptive structures. In this paper, a general two-stage optimization procedure is proposed to place actuators for adaptive structures under static loads. Former studies focused on placing actuators to minimize displacements. However, this leads to unnecessary large actuator forces, as displacements do not have to be compensated as much as possible, but only to reach certain service criteria. For this, different objectives using the proposed optimization procedure are introduced, minimizing either the displacements or the actuator forces while maintaining displacement constraints, what should lead to a reduction in the required actuation forces. The optimization results are systematically compared for an example structure in terms of the resulting displacements, the required actuator forces and the respective optimal actuator configurations.