Validation of 6DOF Shake Table for Testing of Half Scaled Reinforced Concrete Model

Abstract

Pakistan is located at the collision boundaries of Indian, Eurasian and Arabian plates. It is estimated that
8th October 2005 Kashmir Earthquake took 80,000 lives with the economic loss of US $6 billion. Pakistan is the 6th most
heavily populated country of the world. Reinforced Concrete (RC) structures is a popular form of construction in rapidly
developing world. Research regarding this type of construction is the need of hour. Keeping in view the capacity of
6DOF shake table a half scaled two stories RC model was constructed on 6-meter square shake table which is the largest
shake table in the South Asia. Before finalizing the experimental setup, the capacity of shake table was checked with 18
and 48 tons service loads. For these loads different tabletop acceleration response histories and displacement response
histories were plotted, from which the performance of shake table was evaluated. This paper mainly focuses on the
rigorous process of validation of shake table, spanning over three months for the preparation of table for the test.