Analysis, design, and construction of a shaking table facility

Rice University's Department of Civil Engineering recently added an electro-hydraulic shaking table facility to their testing laboratory. The purpose of the shaking table is to evaluate the response of scaled model structures subjected to base excitation. Every component of the shaking table was carefully designed or sized to perform optimally at targeted levels. The performance curves for the shaking table which define the maximum load, velocity, and displacements that the table can attain were developed from the specifications of the hydraulic system. Interaction between the shaking table system and the foundation mass was analyzed. The dynamic characteristics of the slip plate and its interaction with model structures were studied to determine the optimum size of the slip plate. The transfer function between the command displacement signal sent to the table and the table displacement was developed analytically for the system, encompassing servovalve hydraulics and the PIDF control system.