Dynamic Substructuring for Soil Structure Interaction using a Shaking Table

The investigation of soil-structure interaction phenomena is often performed on a shaking table with a model foundation-structure system embedded in a soil container. As the size and power of the shaking table limits the size of the specimen, only small scale models can be tested using this method. A novel structural testing method to overcome this disadvantage is supplied by the real-time dynamic substructuring. This paper develops a real-time substructuring testing system for the seismic simulation of soil-structure interaction using a shaking table. The soil-foundation system was modelled numerically, the superstructure was modelled physically, and the shaking table was used to reproduce the interface response. Both outer loop controller and delay compensation were chosen as the control strategies to compensate for the dynamics of shaking table. Finally, the results from an entirely physical test are compared to those from a real-time substructuring test in order to verify the validity of this method.