• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.1055-1079
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• 2014

Substructure shake table testing is a class of real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS). It combines shake table tests of substructures with real-time computational simulation of the remaining part of the structure to assess dynamic response of the entire structure. Unlike in the conventional hybrid simulation, substructure shake table testing imposes acceleration compatibilities at substructure boundaries. However, acceleration tracking of shake tables is extremely challenging, and it is not possible to produce perfect acceleration tracking without time delay. If responses of the experimental substructure have high correlation with ground accelerations, response errors are inevitably induced by the erroneous input acceleration. Feeding the erroneous responses into the RTHS procedure will deteriorate the simulation results. This study presents a set of techniques to enable reliable substructure shake table testing. The developed techniques include compensation techniques for errors induced by imperfect input acceleration of shake tables, model-based actuator delay compensation with state observer, and force correction to eliminate process and measurement noises. These techniques are experimentally investigated through RTHS using a uni-axial shake table and three-story steel frame structure at the Johns Hopkins University. The simulation results showed that substructure shake table testing with the developed compensation techniques provides an accurate and reliable means to simulate the dynamic responses of the entire structure under earthquake excitations.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.155-167
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• 2020

This paper demonstrates a real-time hybrid substructuring (RTHS) shake table test to evaluate the seismic performance of a base isolated building. Since RTHS involves a feedback loop in the test implementation, the frequency dependent magnitude and inherent time delay of the actuator dynamics can introduce inaccuracy and instability. The paper presents a robust stability and performance analysis method for the RTHS test. The robust stability method involves casting the actuator dynamics as a multiplicative uncertainty and applying the small gain theorem to derive the sufficient conditions for robust stability and performance. The attractive feature of this robust stability and performance analysis method is that it accommodates linearized modeled or measured frequency response functions for both the physical substructure and actuator dynamics. Significant experimental research has been conducted on base isolators and dampers toward developing high fidelity numerical models. Shake table testing, where the building superstructure is tested while the isolation layer is numerically modeled, can allow for a range of isolation strategies to be examined for a single shake table experiment. Further, recent concerns in base isolation for long period, long duration earthquakes necessitate adding damping at the isolation layer, which can allow higher frequency energy to be transmitted into the superstructure and can result in damage to structural and nonstructural components that can be difficult to numerically model and accurately predict. As such, physical testing of the superstructure while numerically modeling the isolation layer may be desired. The RTHS approach has been previously proposed for base isolated buildings, however, to date it has not been conducted on a base isolated structure isolated at the ground level and where the isolation layer itself is numerically simulated. This configuration provides multiple challenges in the RTHS stability associated with higher physical substructure frequencies and a low numerical to physical mass ratio. This paper demonstrates a base isolated RTHS test and the robust stability and performance analysis necessary to ensure the stability and accuracy. The tests consist of a scaled idealized 4-story superstructure building model placed directly onto a shake table and the isolation layer simulated in MATLAB/Simulink using a dSpace real-time controller.