Purdue Civil Engineering is approaching structural systems analysis from a new, digital angle.

Shirley Dyke, professor of civil engineering and mechanical engineering, and Arun Prakash, associate professor of civil engineering, are coprincipal investigators leading a team that hopes to transform structural evaluation through cyber-physical experimentation. The team is conducting its research via real-time hybrid simulation (RTHS) — a cyber-physical technique used to examine the global behavior of structural systems that are too large or complex to test in a laboratory at large scale.

Dyke says that the RTHS technique fills a testing gap that needs to be addressed.

“We can’t always predict how new building design concepts are going to behave under extreme conditions out in the real world, and testing serves to illuminate potential pitfalls,” she says. “This is a way to do less expensive and rapid testing, without the large shake tables. It is also for structures that wouldn’t fit in a laboratory at all.”

Prakash adds that he hopes this will ultimately lead to more efficient testing that can be utilized by engineers all around the world.

“We truly want to advance the art of hybrid simulation here,” Prakash says. “It is our hope that our work will be accepted by the structures community and lead to new innovations.”

Assisting Dyke and Prakash is Amin Maghareh, who earned his PhD from Purdue in August. Maghareh says the work being done by the team will improve how structures are tested in the future.

“Current testing is somewhat limited,” he says. “With this research, we’re able to simulate larger, more complex models. This process and the results are things that have never been seen before.”

RTHS is highly interdisciplinary, requiring expertise in structural mechanics, modeling, control, signal processing and computer science. In the Intelligent Infrastructure Systems Laboratory, located in the Bowen  Laboratory facility, Purdue faculty and graduate students from civil engineering and mechanical engineering are working in partnership with computer scientists from Washington University in St. Louis. Together, they are making major advances in the science and implementation of RTHS techniques.

The research is funded through a $1.8 million National Science Foundation grant — split evenly between Purdue and Washington universities.