Delay Estimation for Reliability Interpretation of Real-Time Hybrid Simulation Involving Viscous Dampers Towards Seismic Hazard Mitigation

Laboratory experiments play a critical role in earthquake engineering research for seismic safety evaluation of civil engineering structures. Servo-hydraulic actuators play a vital role to maintain the compatibility on boundaries between the analytical and experimental substructures in a real-time hybrid simulation. Previous study has indicated that actuator delay could significantly affect the accuracy of real-time hybrid simulation involving viscous dampers. Identifying the amount of actuator delay therefore is critical for reliability assessment of experimental results to properly interpret the performance of viscous dampers for seismic hazard mitigation. In this study a frequency domain based approach is applied for real-time hybrid simulation of viscous dampers with the presence of actuator delay. Computational simulations are conducted to assess the accuracy of the approach for estimating the delay when the substructures develop nonlinear behavior for reliability interpretation of real-time hybrid simulation.