Real-Time Hybrid Simulation of a Single-Span Girder Bridge Using a Shake Table Coupled with an Actuator

This paper recounts a real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS) that employed a shake table coupled with an actuator to evaluate the seismic performance of a single-span girder bridge. The test specimen for this RTHS was a scaled single-span girder bridge, which was subjected to Loma Prieta excitation in the test. In the RTHS, the bridge specimen, which lacked mass on top of the bridge deck, was physically tested by a shake table and an actuator, whilst the mass on the bridge, as well as the pile foundation and the soil were modeled numerically. OpenSEES was used for numerical modeling and OpenFresco was used for the communication between the test system and numerical model. An adaptive time series (ATS) technique was employed to compensate for time delay in the RTHS. In this way, a novel bridge engineering RTHS application case composed of shake table and actuator control was presented. To validate the results of the RTHS, a shake table test (STT) of the bridge structure with full mass on the bridge deck was conducted correspondingly. Comparing the RTHS and STT results, it can be concluded that acceleration histories, bearing deformation histories, and strain histories of the selected points matched well. The application of RTHS to assess the seismic behavior of the single-span girder bridge was reasonably verified in this paper.