Chaotic behaviour in the non-linear optimal control of unilaterally contacting building systems during earthquakes. (Q1419357)

In the very important and useful paper, a new numerical approach for a nonlinear optimal control problem arising in earthquake civil engineering is proposed. This problem concerns the elastoplastic softening-fracturing unilateral control between neighbouring buildings during earthquakes when Coulomb friction is taken into account under second-order destabilizing effects. The problem formulation presented here leads to a set of equations and inequalities, which is equivalent to a dynamic hemivariational inequality. The numerical procedure is based on an incremental problem formulation and on a double discretization, in space by an infinite element method and in time by the Wilson-\(\vartheta\) method. Main result: The generally non-convex constitutive contact laws are piecewise linearized, and in each time-step a non-convex linear complementarity problem is solved with a reduced number of unknowns. Finally, the method is applied to a civil engineering example of adjacent steel frames.