Concept of Structural Control

TLDR

In practice, structural safety is challenged by uncertainties in loads, strengths, and analysis methods, leading to the use of safety factors and probabilistic approaches, while analysis techniques continue to improve. The study proposes structural control as an alternative to traditional safety approaches in structural engineering. The authors review key concepts of control theory and early work applying it to structural engineering. An example using analog parallel logic devices demonstrates the practicality of the structural control concept.

Abstract

In an ideal situation, completely safe structures can be designed if exact information is known concerning loads and strengths involved during the lifetime of these structures, and exact methods of structural analysis are available. In the real world uncertainties exist in this information as well as in the method of analysis. To account for these uncertainties, various factors of safety have been used in the design of structures. Probabilistic methods have been applied for the interpretation as well as determination of these factors of safety. Techniques in structural analysis are being refined continuously. The objective herein is to present the concept of structural control as an alternative approach to the safety problems of structural engineering. Pertinent points of the control theory are reviewed along with certain pioneering work in this direction. The practicality of this concept is illustrated with an example using analog parallel logic devices.