Experimental validation of a scaled instrument for Real-Time Hybrid Testing

A highly reconfigurable cyber-physical Real-time Hybrid Test (RTHT) instrument is under development that is particularly suitable for Civil Engineering structural control testing applications. The instrument serves as a testbed for studying structural system behavior under dynamic loading and associated vibration mitigation control techniques. The focus of this paper is to validate the developed framework experimentally regarding both its accuracy and efficiency in conducting RTHT. A MATLAB-based nonlinear finite element simulation tool, designed to predict seismically excited non-linear building response, is used as an analytical substructure, with a magneto-rheological (MR) damper as a physical substructure. A model based control scheme is adopted to compensate for de-synchronization between substructure interfaces caused by hydraulic actuator dynamics. The RTHT is then conducted for both passive and semi-active MR damper control cases, the results of which show an excellent match between RTHT and pure numerical simulation outputs, thus demonstrating the effectiveness of the prototype instrument.