Los Alamos National LaboratoryEngineering Institute
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Nonlinear Shake Table Control

Collaboration between Los Alamos National Laboratory and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) Jacobs School of Engineering

Contact  

  • Institute Director
  • Charles Farrar
  • (505) 663-5330
  • Email
  • UCSD EI Director
  • Michael Todd
  • (858) 534-5951
  • Executive Administrator
  • Ellie Vigil
  • (505) 667-2818
  • Email
  • Institute Administrator
  • Vacant

UCSD Faculty and Graduate Students

  • Professor Miroslav Krstic , Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering

LANL Collaborators

  • Dr. Matt Bement (INST-OFF: INSTITUTES)

The primary objective of this research effort is to develop a capability that will allow shock and vibration testing of critical LANL components to be done in a more accurate manner than is currently possible.  Because current shake table control is fundamentally linear, there is a limit to how well current shake tables can effect a prescribed vibration environment on a structure whose behavior is fundamentally nonlinear.  Thus, the students assigned to this project will develop control techniques that will allow an electrodynamic shake table to impose a vibration environment on a nonlinear structure that is closer to the desired vibration environment, both in the time and frequency domains.  The control techniques developed will be evaluated against current techniques on structures relevant to LANL’s stockpile stewardship mission.