Spatiotemporal video‐domain high‐fidelity simulation and realistic visualization of full‐field dynamic responses of structures by a combination of high‐spatial‐resolution modal model and video motion manipulations

Structures with complex geometries, material properties, and boundary conditions exhibit spatially local dynamic behaviors. A high‐spatial‐resolution model of the structure is thus required for high‐fidelity analysis, assessment, and prediction of the dynamic phenomena of the structure. The traditional approach is to build a highly refined finite element computer model for simulating and analyzing the structural dynamic phenomena based on detailed knowledge and explicit modeling of the structural physics such as geometries, materials properties, and boundary conditions. These physics information of the structure may not be available or accurately modeled in many cases, however. In addition, the simulation on the high‐spatial‐resolution structural model, with a massive number of degrees of freedom and system parameters, is computationally demanding. This study, on a proof‐of‐principle basis, proposes a novel alternative approach for spatiotemporal video‐domain high‐fidelity simulation and realistic visualization of full‐field structural dynamics by an innovative combination of the fundamentals of structural dynamic modeling and the advanced video motion manipulation techniques. Specifically, a low‐modal‐dimensional yet high‐spatial (pixel)‐resolution (as many spatial points as the pixel number on the structure in the video frame) modal model is established in the spatiotemporal video domain with full‐field modal parameters first estimated from line‐of‐sight video measurements of the operating structure. Then in order to simulate new dynamic response of the structure subject to a new force, the force is projected onto each modal domain, and the modal response is computed by solving each individual single‐degree‐of‐freedom system in the modal domain. The simulated modal responses are then synthesized by the full‐field mode shapes using modal superposition to obtain the simulated full‐field structural dynamic response. Finally, the simulated structural dynamic response is embedded into the original video, replacing the original motion of the video, thus generating a new photo‐realistic, physically accurate video that enables a realistic, high‐fidelity visualization/animation of the simulated full‐field vibration of the structure. Laboratory experiments are conducted to validate the proposed method, and the error sources and limitations in practical implementations are also discussed. Compared with high‐fidelity finite element computer model simulations of structural dynamics, the video‐based simulation method removes the need to explicitly model the structure's physics. In addition, the photo‐realistic, physically accurate simulated video provides a realistic visualization/animation of the full‐field structural dynamic response, which was not traditionally available. These features of the proposed method should enable a new alternative to the traditional computer‐aided finite element model simulation for high‐fidelity simulating and realistically visualizing full‐field structural dynamics in a relatively efficient and user‐friendly manner.