Vibration Control of Flexible Retention Systems

Infrastructure and facilities built on structures retaining backfill cause significant damage due to large displacement of retaining walls during excessive vibration. The smart materials can be provided to compensate for the deleterious effects of vibration. Smart materials, namely Lead Zirconate Titanate also known as piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) material, are used to minimize the displacement due to the induced vibration and to control the flexible retention system for granular materials. The solution of the displacement control of retaining walls of varying flexibility is indeterminate in a multivariate system. The excessive vibration may reduce the life span of a retaining wall and may get transferred to the critical locations inducing plastic uncontrolled deformations. This paper investigates the response of smart material to control vibration by means of input transformation techniques. The time-domain formulation exploits the vibration as input and output finite settling time for motion excitation vibrations. The finite settling time depends on the natural frequencies and spring constant of vibration of the flexible retaining wall and granular backfill. The numerical analysis concludes that the provision of piezoelectric ceramic (PZT) material describes the specification of finite-time vibration cancelation. Effect of reduction of vibration by using smart material on the flexibility of the retaining structure is presented.