Verification of Optimized Real-time Hybrid Control System for Prediction of Nonlinear Materials Behavior with 3-DOF Dynamic Test

Abstract

Real-time hybrid method is an economical and efficient test method to evaluate the dynamic behavior. The purpose of this study is to develop the computational algorithm and to prove the reliability of a real-time hybrid control system. For performing the multi-direction dynamic test, three dynamic actuators and the optimized real-time hybrid system with new hybrid simulation program (FEAPH) and a simplified inter-communication were optimized. To verify the reliability and applicability of the real-time hybrid control system, 3-DOF (3 Degrees of Freedom) non-linear dynamic tests with physical model were conducted on a steel and concrete frame structure. As a ground acceleration, El Centro and Northridge earthquake waves were applied. As a result, the maximum error of numerical analysis is 13% compared with the result of shaking table test. However, the result of real-time hybrid test shows good agreement with the shaking table test. The real-time hybrid test using FEAPH can make good progress on the total testing time and errors. Therefore, this test method using FEAPH can be effectively and cheaply used to evaluate the dynamic performance of the full-scale structure, instead of shaking table and full-scale test.