Study of dynamic behavior
Introduction
Structural dynamics is a type of structural analysis that studies the behavior of a structure subjected to dynamic loads (actions with high acceleration). Dynamic loads include people, wind, waves, traffic, earthquakes, and explosions. Any structure can be subjected to dynamic loading. Dynamic analysis can be used to find dynamic displacements, time histories, and modal analysis.
Structural analysis is mainly concerned with finding out the behavior of a physical structure when subjected to a force. This action can be in the form of a load due to the weight of things such as people, furniture, wind, snow, etc. or some other type of excitation such as an earthquake, ground movement due to a nearby explosion, etc. In essence, all of these loads are dynamic, including the self-weight of the structure because at some point these loads were not there. The distinction is made between dynamic and static analysis on the basis of whether the applied action has sufficient acceleration compared to the natural frequency of the structure. If a load is applied slowly enough, inertial forces can be ignored and the analysis can be simplified as static analysis.
A static load "Static (mechanical)") is one that varies very slowly. A dynamic load is one that changes over time quite rapidly compared to the natural frequency of the structure. If it changes slowly, the response of the structure can be determined with a static analysis, but if it varies rapidly (relative to the responsiveness of the structure), the response must be determined with a dynamic analysis.
Dynamic analysis for simple structures can be carried out manually, but for complex structures finite element analysis can be used to calculate vibration modes and frequencies.
A dynamic load can have a significantly greater effect than a static load of the same magnitude due to the inability of the structure to respond quickly to the load (by deflecting). The increase in the effect of a dynamic load is given by the dynamic amplification factor (DAF) or dynamic load factor (DLF):.
Where u is the deflection of the structure due to the applied load.
There are plots of dynamic amplification factors versus non-dimensional rise time (t/T) for standard load functions (for an explanation of rise time, see time history analysis below). Therefore, the DAF for a given load can be read from the graph, the static deflection can be easily calculated for simple structures and the dynamic deflection is found.