Benchmarks

One of the major aims of the committee is promoting the development and improvement of the technics of measurement and modelling of jointed structures behaviour, which often is nonlinear due to its intrinsic structure. The benchmark systems are aimed to help researchers to test their developed technics of jointed structure behaviour measurement and prediction. In other words – benchmarks serve as a reference system for verification. The benchmark system must have the following qualities:

• Well-controlled and understood boundary conditions to avoid uncertainties during experiment and modelling;

• Simple experimental setup to be easily repeatable and commonly used.

In this section several benchmarks, including its variations, pretended to be such reference systems, are described.

The Gaul Resonator

Description

The Gaul resonator consist of two massive parts, connected to each other by the single lap joint, one of which is designed to have an elastic element in foundation of connection interface.

The resonator is designed in a way, that it has relatively low natural frequency, corresponds for the tangential movement in the joint. It allows to achieve a quite heavy dynamic tangential loadings by exciting the system around an axial resonance frequency.

Experimental setup with Gaul Resonator from original work

The original resonator was developed by professor L. Gaul research group and was made from round steel stock. This resonator is investigated in Gaul and Bohlen (1987), Gaul et al. (1994), Lenz and Gaul (1995) and Gaul and Lenz (1997).