An introduction to structural dynamic

Structural dynamic sounds a hard subject. With the help of a shaker and some simple model structures Armelle Anthoine, Francesco Marazzi and Daniel Tirelli, researcher at ELSA (European Laboratory for Structural Assessment), easily introduce students into this discipline which pave the way to many field of applied research.

Almost everybody has hired about the resonance phenomenon. It is common knowledge that a soldier platoon must interrupt his mach when passing a bridge: recently the Millennium Bridge in London, finished in 2000, was closed in a short time because of unacceptable lateral oscillations. People walking on it naturally tuned their movements on the first lateral frequency of the bridge. The Tacoma Bridge in U.S.A. in perhaps the most famous example: the bridge collapsed after repeated oscillations of very wide amplitude. Even if in most of the cases structures are not damaged, large movements can be uncomfortable: when tall building sway for wind the occupants fell something similar to sea hake.

earthquake and man-made activities. This means that studies on the dynamic properties of the structures is becoming day to day more important. Is this problem a difficult task for specialists? Yes, for sure it requires a solid background in physics and structural mechanics, but its basic principles can be catch also from undergraduate students. How? With some simples experiments.

What is exactly resonance?

The concept of natural frequency of a simple structure can be easily illustrated using some bodies assembled with Meccano elements. A mass is fixed to one extremity of a flexible beam, the other extremity being fixed to the ground. If we pull on it and suddenly release it (what is called a snap-back test) the mass will mainly oscillate at its natural frequency. Even on a very small scale, is a test very

similar to those realized on the real scale building being tested at ELSA in order to characterize them before performing seismic tests. The term natural suggest that this frequency is intrinsic to the body. It is the most easy to excite, too. This means that, if we act at that frequency, we can induce large oscillation by acting with small forcing actions. When the ratio between the input and the output is the highest, we say that the structure is in resonance with the exciting force.

A simple demonstration facility

The above concept can be strait visualized with a simple experiment. Several different structures are assembled with Meccano elements. A short list can be the following: a small scale three storey building some Single Degree Of Freedom (SDOF) systems with the same

Slender structures
Tall buildings and bridges are becoming slender, so more prone to vibrate under natural excitation caused by wind,

stiffness but different masses some SDOF structures with the same masses but different stiffness Some magnets can be added on the fly to increase the mass of the oscillating masses. These structures are fixed on a horizontal shaker driven by a signal generator. The signal generator can give a sinusoidal signal of an assigned frequency and with given amplitude.

structures will have almost a frequency where they suffer large displacements. Complex structures experienced more than one resonance frequency. The simplest natural shapes correspond to the lower resonance frequency, the complexity of the natural shape growing with the frequency.

Some astonishing matters

Students consider a strange fact that a structure suddenly start to considerably vibrate when a specific exciting frequency is reached. What astonish them, however, is to see that some little magnets applied to the vibrating mass can almost completely stop the sways. Has the structure become stiffer? Surely not. In any case, we then diminish the exciting frequency: the great oscillations return. But if we remove the magnet masses, the structure drastically reduce its movements. Are magnets magic?

And now, play!

The experimental set-up is now ready and we can start to play with. We fix the amplitude, and then we start the test. The shaker starts to vibrate at the requested frequency. Little by little, the frequency is increased, so sweeping on all frequencies. At very low frequencies all the structures vibrate only a little. Increasing the shaker frequency we suddenly observe that a structures start to vibrate very much. Instinctively, students want to reduce the frequency. But if we increased it we obtain the same result: the oscillator considerably reduce its displacements. What happens? We have passed its natural frequency. In we increase it again, another structure enter in resonance. Sweeping on a wide frequency spectrum all

Toward the basic governing formula

A very interesting point is to guide the students in the discovery of the mathematical formulas related to an observed phenomenon. In our case, a step-by-step approach is usually followed. The degree of formalization is tuned on

the scientific background of the students. Step 1: some additional masses are attached to the oscillating body at resonance. The excitation frequency has not changed, but the body has considerably reduced its displacements. This means that its resonance frequency has changed. So a relation between the mass and the frequency value should exist. We can then write on a blackboard the function f=f(m). Step 2: we need now to find that function. If we try to decrease the excitation frequency, we enter again in resonance. This means that there is an inverse relation between the frequency and the mass. We can write on the blackboard something like f is proportional to 1/m or f ~ 1/m (everybody know that f is proportional to the square root of the inverse mass, but at this step the important think is that the student discover that adding massed will decrease the natural frequency). Step 3: we take two bodies, one with a double layer rod, so with a double stiffness. They will have different resonance frequencies. This implies that a relation between frequency and stiffness should exist, i.e. f=f(k). Step 4: the stiffener body has also higher frequency. This suggests a linear relation

between these two quantities. We can write f is proportional to k on the blackboard (also in this case, everybody knows that f is proportional to the square root of the stiffness, but the important thing at this stage is that a student fix in his mind that these two quantities both increase or decrease). Step 5: we suggest to note that two bodies with the same top mass and different height have different resonance frequencies. In particular the frequency decreases if the body becomes taller. This is a further confirmation that frequency and stiffness are directly connected. Step 6: the final step is to merge the previous formulas. We can write on the blackboard something like f

~ k/m. Then the exact formula for a SDOF can be given as: 1 k f = 2 m where the frequency f is in Hz, the stiffness k in N/m and the mass m in kg.

http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/jrc/ind ex.cfm?id=5210&lang= en

Resources

From structural dynamic to structural control

(here something about vibration dampers can be added)

Conclusions References Web references

w1 ELSA web-site http://elsa.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ w2 Open day 2009 at JRC

Armelle Anthoine and Daniel Tirelli are researchers at ELSA (European Laboratory for Structural Assessment) of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, Ispra (VA), Italy. Francesco Marazzi is a highschool teacher temporary lent to research for his post-doc grant on dynamics and seismic testing at ELSA, Italy.