A Real-Time Hybrid Testing Platform for the Evaluation of Seismic Mitigation in Building Structures

Real-time hybrid testing (RTHT) has become a promising alternative to reduce the cost and operational demands when evaluating the performance of damping systems for seismic response attenuation in building structures. While damper devices can be physically tested, buildings can be represented with computational models to avoid the expense of testing a large, integrated specimen. Therefore, reliable simulation tools are needed to accurately recreate the behavior of the computational component under real-time execution demands; also, appropriate control schemes for testing the experimental component using hydraulic actuators are required for high fidelity RTHT implementation. In this paper, a novel RTHT platform appropriate for the study and evaluation of damped buildings is presented. The main components of the platform are described, including the computational tool for performing non-linear dynamic analysis of steel frames and the advanced robust control strategy for the hydraulic actuators. Additionally, initial results of a validation experiment using a re-configurable steel moment-resisting frame are presented to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed RTHT framework.