Efficient solution of the multiple seismic pounding problem using hierarchical substructure techniques

Abstract

Structural pounding is one of the major reasons for severe structural damage or even collapse. Thus, detailed simulations, including dynamic contact formulations, are often required in order to obtain reliable response information of structures. This leads inevitably to computationally expensive analysis. Therefore, in this paper, an effective hierarchical substructure method, adapted to structural pounding problems, is introduced. Based on that, a hybrid substructure method is presented. Both strategies are presented on an academic multiple pounding example, applying both a sinusoidal and a real earthquake excitation. It is shown that both strategies enable accurate low-order representations of the complex full dynamic contact problem. Thereafter, the new approaches are compared with the classical modal truncation strategy and an improved controlled modal truncation strategy. It is shown that an extensive improvement of the approximation of the full response can be achieved applying the new hierarchical substructure and the new hybrid substructure approach.