Real-Time Hybrid Simulation of Viscous Dampers for Seismic Hazard Mitigation

Laboratory experiments play a critical role in earthquake engineering research for seismic safety evaluation of civil engineering structures. Real-time hybrid simulation provides a viable alternative for shake table testing to evaluate seismic performances of structures with rate-dependent seismic devices. Servo-hydraulic actuators play a vital role in a real-time hybrid simulation to maintain the boundary condition between the analytical and experimental substructures. Compensation of actuator delay is critical to minimize synchronization error from actuator delay and to achieve a successful real-time hybrid simulation. Research on how actuator delay can affect the real-time hybrid simulation involving viscous fluid damper is presented in this study. It is demonstrated that although the viscous fluid damper can help stabilize the real-time hybrid simulation with actuator delay, the experimental results need to be interpreted appropriately to evaluate the performance of viscous fluid damper for seismic hazard mitigation.© 2014 ASME