Verification of Pseudo-dynamic testing of steel members

A new on-line computer-controlled testing facility developed at Imperial College is described. The accuracy and stability of the closed-loop feedback system are investigated by testing a steel member under impulse and earthquake excitations in the linear and nonlinear domains. The results obtained demonstrate the very high precision of the developed set-up, since no error propagation was detected. The experimental results are compared to nonlinear dynamic analysis. In the linear range, excellent agreement is observed, thus further substantiating the accuracy of the testing procedure. In the non-linear range, discrepancies observed after a number of cycles are attributed to inaccuracies in defining the analytical model parameters.