Online identification of torsionally coupled shear buildings using virtual synchronization method

In this study, the virtual synchronization method is developed for online identification of parameters in torsionally coupled shear buildings. In this method, first, a virtual model of the building is made and excited simultaneously with the actual building. Then, a proper virtual controller is designed, which forces the virtual model to follow the dynamic response of the actual building by converging the unknown parameters to the actual values. A major difficulty of the virtual synchronization method originates from the determination of its design parameters, which greatly affects the final performance. The main contribution of this study is an optimum scenario for defining the design parameters of the virtual synchronization method to maintain desirable accuracy and convergence speed. Provided numerical studies show that the proposed design scenario makes the virtual synchronization method a competitor to the other well-known methods. Also, the effect of building height and excitation on the performance of the virtual synchronization method is studied. Besides, robustness against measurement noise and modeling uncertainties are investigated.