Aktive Schwingungskontrolle einer Spannbandbrücke mit pneumatischen Aktuatoren

Multimodal active vibration control of a stress ribbon bridge using pneumatic muscle actuators.

New materials and technologies not only allow building ultralight and slender bridges, they also enable the construction of sustainable bridges. By using high-strength carbon fibre reinforced plastic, a very light and flexible stress ribbon footbridge with a span of 13 m and a structural height of only 1 mm was designed and built in the lab of the Chair of Conceptual and Structural Design at TU Berlin. In order to counteract the high level of pedestrian-induced vibrations, an active vibration control concept was developed and applied to the prototype. This concept consists of sensors, closed loop controls and biologically inspired actuators. The actuators are embedded into the handrail to control the first three vertical modes of the bridge. One basic element for the development of the active system is the modelling of the bridge to design model-based controller. The efficiency of the multimodal active vibration control and the potential of active systems are shown by an enormous reduction of pedestrian-induced accelerations up to 90 %.