"Structural Engineering Forums" by thestructuralengineer.info

Hi there Structural Engineers,

I'm a MSc student in Structural Engineering. I am going to test the seismic performance of some walls on a shake table in the lab. I have chosen an earthquake profile to input into the shake table. Now, I need to know what the maximum force that the shake table actuators will be exerting will be before I run the experiment to check whether the walls will be able to withstand that force or not. Could you advise me how I can find that maximum force from the earthquake time-history (acceleration-time graph) that I have?

I know the answer to this might be very simple, but I haven't been able to figure it out yet. I will really appreciate your help on this.

Thanks a lot!

Regards,

Ed

Hey Ed,

why don't you run a non linear dynamic analysis of your wall?

It shouldn't be too complicated even if you are a beginner in that. Many expensive softwares do that (like ANSYS, DIANA), but even much cheaper ones or free ones (developed for reasearch) if you are ready to cope with no graphical user interface (sftwares called Ruaumoko or Opensees).

My favourite one is Ruaumoko (you can find some support at www.ruaumoko.forumattivo.com) because it is much easier than opensees (support at http://opensees.berkeley.edu/community/ ... um.php?f=2).

Cheers,
Gamma