Real-time Hybrid Simulation and Application Towards Enhancing Multi-Natural Hazard Civil Infrastructural Resiliency

ABSTRACT

Stakeholders are demanding that the performance of the built civil infrastructure be more resilient to natural hazards in order to reduce their impact on society. Performance-based engineering is a means to attempt to meet performance objectives associated with prescribed levels of hazards. A viable technique to meet validation requirements for performance-engineered structural systems is to use real-time hybrid simulation to perform cyber-physical experiments. The complete system is involved in these simulations, where selected components of the system are modeled physically while others are modeled numerically using computational models. The modeling of the former in the physical domain is required because accurate computational models do not exist for these components. In such studies the response modification devices can be coupled to a system that is subjected to a prescribed hazard with a specific return period, enabling system performance under prescribed levels of realistic hazard demands to be established. The talk will present results from recent efforts that the presenter and his research team have completed to advance large-scale multi-directional real-time hybrid simulation. Topics of the talk include an overview of the development of model-based unconditionally stable dissipative explicit direct integration algorithms, explicit state-determination force-based fiber elements, and adaptive servo-hydraulic actuator control algorithms. The real-time integrated control IT architecture used to implement these develops will also be presented. The talk will conclude with applications of these developments to perform real-time hybrid simulations of nonlinear structural systems subjected to earthquake and wind hazards, including extensions to offshore wind turbines, aeroelastic response of tall buildings, and simulations with soil-structure interaction involving machine learning.

BIOGRAPHY

James Ricles works in the area of structural engineering and mechanics with application to structural resiliency. He received his B.S and M.S degrees from the University of Texas, Austin and his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He is the Bruce G. Johnston Professor of Structural Engineering and has been a faculty member of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Lehigh University since 1992. Prior to joining the Lehigh University faculty he worked for Exxon Production Offshore Research Company and was a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego. Among his research interests is the development and implementation of computational frameworks for large-scale multi-directional real-time hybrid simulations applied to complex structural systems. He is the principal investigator and director of the NSF Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure Experimental Facility (NHERI) located at Lehigh University. James is a registered professional engineer in the State of California, the Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Structures, and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for the International Journal of Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics. Among his awards, he is the recipient of the NSF Presidential Young Investigators Award, the ASCE Raymond C. Reese Research Prize and AISC Special Achievement Award for his work in innovations in structural resiliency.

Zoom Link: https://stevens.zoom.us/j/91634601626

To view the full list of seminar speakers for the Fall 2023 semester, visit the CEOE Seminars page.