Experimental modal analysis for dynamic parameter identification
Author:
Kurt Phipps ’24Co-Authors:
Faculty Mentor(s):
Kelly Salyards Civil & Environmental EngineeringFunding Source:
PURAbstract
This summer during Research I learned a ton of skills that can be used in my field as well as many life skills that will be so useful for my professional life after college. My biggest takeaways from the project is I have a deep understanding of how to use Crystal Instruments Spider80XI software as well as SAP2000 software. These programs enabled me to gather actual data from our structure to use in comparisons and to visualize what is occurring in my cantilever experimental structure. I learned that 1-support cantilevers behave much differently than 2-support cantilevers especially when the 2nd support is hard to understand with what degrees of freedom it is truly restraining and I learned that structures don’t change very much from dynamic excitation over years and it is possible to reproduce results from many years earlier. I learned these through experimental analysis by moving support conditions around and altering the mass the electrodynamic excitation would send through the structure. Every change would have a substantial impact on the frequency the structure experienced in each mode. SAP was super helpful in this phase too because it enabled me to theoretically see when the frequency should be for each mode based on my configuration and can use that visualization to tweak my structure to be as close as possible to what is theoretically expected. When the two matched up closely I was able to determine my structure is acting how it would be expected.