Shake Table Testing Techniques: Current Challenges and New Trends

Abstract

Shake table tests play an important role in the research carried out worldwide to improve existing knowledge on the seismic performance of buildings and other civil engineering structures, including non-structural elements, and also for the seismic qualification of electromechanical equipment. Due to physical constraints, testing of real scale models is usually restricted to small sized structures. For larger structures, reduced scale models are required; otherwise, only substructures can be tested. Each of these approaches presents a different challenge. In reduced scale models, the choice of the scale factor and the similitude law is determined by the type of structure being tested and the relevant phenomena involved. Testing of substructures usually requires an elaborate testing setup in order to impose the necessary boundary conditions. More recently, the development and implementation of hybrid simulations allows carrying out tests on real scale structures combining a physical model on a shake table, where the non linear phenomena occur, with a numerical model in a computer, usually with linear elastic behavior, which can be much larger than the actual testing facility limits. This chapter will address several shake table test methods, focusing on the issues and challenges involved in each one, and the most recent developments on this topic.