An adaptive observer for a shear building with an energy-dissipation device

This paper presents an adaptive observer to simultaneously estimate the parameters and states in a shear structure with an energy-dissipation device. The proposed scheme allows the closed-loop reconstruction of floor displacements and velocities through acceleration and force measurements. An important feature of the proposed scheme is that it does not require a canonical representation nor a state transformation, common design requirements in other adaptive schemes that lead to the estimation of non-physical variables. Sufficient conditions for stability are given via a matrix inequality. The design is illustrated with experimental results gathered with a reduced-scale five-story structure with a magneto-rheological damper.