Development of a Real-Time Hybrid Experimental System with Actuator Delay Compensation : 3rd Report, Application to Nonlinear Structural Systems

Abstract

Hybrid experimental method, in which an actuator-excited vibration experiment and a response analysis with a computer are on-line combined and simultaneously conducted, is being developed as a new seismic experimental method for structural systems. We developed an experimental system which can conduct hybrid experiments in real time by introducing actuator-delay compensation. By using this system, the dynamic characteristics of the structure under experiment become possible to be properly considered in the response calculation. In order to demonstrate that the system can be used for sesimic experiments of nonlinear structural systems, real-time hybrid experiments of single-degree-freedom systems including a few types of nonlinear characteristics were conducted and the experimental resulsts were compared with the analytical results obtained from numerical time-integration. Even though small discrepancies caused by compensation error were observed, the experimental results were successfully agreed with the analytical ones.