An experimental method of modeling “Line-Type” and “Area-Type” connections

A method for experimentally modeling complex connections, such as “Line-Type” connection (LTC) and “Area-Type” connection (ATC), is proposed in this paper. Unlike traditional methods, instead of treating the junction forces as presumed approximate functions, a new strategy proposed in the present paper is to estimate them from experimentally measured accelerations. Along with them, the junction motion information is also estimated from the measured data. Based on this estimated information, the connection's model is built. In this way, two potential disadvantages of traditional methods in modeling complex connections, i.e. the difficulty in finding appropriate functions for complex connections and the computation burden in identifying too many parameters through optimization process, can be avoided. In the proposed method, the LTC is modeled as a series of independent junction node pairs, and the ATC is modeled as a combination of a presumed Virtual Structure and a series of independent Virtual Node Pairs. Numerical and experimental results with the constructed example have verified the effectiveness of the proposed method in modeling both LTC and ATC.