Large Capacity Reaction Floor-Wall Assembly for Pseudo-Dynamic Testing at IIT Kanpur and its Load Rating

The earthquake simulation on full-scale civil engineering structures in a pseudo-dynamic testing facility provides an affordable and practical means to understand the seismic behaviour of structures as it provides accurate information about their real time response of inelastic behaviour up to failure. One such pseudo dynamic testing facility is nearing completion at IIT Kanpur, which has 15 m × 10 m L-shaped and 10.5 m high reaction wall and 1.2 m thick top slab of the box girder for the strong floor. The anchor points are located in the wall and floor in a square grid of 0.6 m with each point has load capacity of 1.7 MN in tension and 1.0 MN in shear. The 2 m thick posttensioned wall using Freyssinet 12K15 cable system in a novel configuration can resist an overturning moment of 12.7 MNm per metre of the wall. The capacity of the reaction assembly depends upon number of loads applied, combination of loads and interaction between different components of the reaction assembly structure. A methodology based on 'influence coefficients' was developed to estimate the worst load combination for describing load rating of the reaction structure. Finite element analyses in ABAQUS environment were conducted to compute the influence coefficients matrix whose elements can be added linearly to find out the maximum loading effect on the reaction structure which can be used to determine the limiting load for a particular case of load application.