Design, Construction, and Testing of an Electrodynamic Uniaxial Bench-Scale Shake Table
Date
2015
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Producer
Director
Performer
Choreographer
Costume Designer
Music
Videographer
Lighting Designer
Set Designer
Crew Member
Funder
Rehearsal Director
Concert Coordinator
Advisor
Moderator
Panelist
Alternative Title
Department
Swarthmore College. Dept. of Engineering
Type
Thesis (B.A.)
Original Format
Running Time
File Format
Place of Publication
Date Span
Copyright Date
Award
Language
en_US
Note
Table of Contents
Terms of Use
Full copyright to this work is retained by the student author. It may only be used for non-commercial, research, and educational purposes. All other uses are restricted.
Rights Holder
Access Restrictions
Terms of Use
Tripod URL
Identifier
Abstract
A bench-scale shake table was designed and constructed for the Swarthmore College Engineering Department. The frame of the shake table was made of Unistrut. It's powered by a motor with a complete built-in servo control system that takes analog output as the velocity through an A/D converter. Two transfer functions were developed: one that connects the motor to the base plate and the other connecting the plate to a simple test structure (lumped mass model). Sensors (LVDT and accelerometers) were hooked onto the base plate and structure to measure acceleration and displacement data to be sent back to Matlab for further analysis and plotting. We used Matlab's linear simulator (lsim) to calculate the theoretical output for a known input waveform, and compared the results to the actual measured output (by the accelerometer). The results matched well for impulse functions, step functions, and arbitrary waveforms such as the El Centro earthquake. Two multi-story stick mass systems were shaken at their respective resonant frequencies to observe the effects of resonance.