Chapter 3 Temperature Variation Modelling of an Assembled Three-Storey Structure Matthew S. Bonney and David Wagg Abstract In the utilisation of a digital twin, one of the most critical aspects is the pairing between the physical and digital systems (or twins). This involves the accurate modelling of the physical twin under realistic loading conditions. A lesser considered loading condition is the environmental conditions on the system, particularly the environmental temperature. This effect of temperature variation is of particular importance when there is a material mismatch, such as reinforced concrete or various metals joined together. This work investigates and compares selected methods for modelling these temperature effects for both high- and low-fidelity finite element models and is validated against experimental tests that were performed in an environmental chamber at the Laboratory for Verification and Validation at the University of Sheffield. Keywords Digital twin · Joint modelling · Model updating 3.1 Introduction Throughout the life cycle of a system, it will typically experience a wide variety of environmental conditions and excitations. These environmental conditions introduce various thermal strains and cycling that can greatly affect the sensitive nature of the mechanical joint. The ability to monitor and predict these effects is particularly important for digital twins that have a life-long accuracy requirement [1–5]. One of the issues with this requirement is the difficulties associated with modelling the non-rigid connection between materials. This difficulty is exacerbated when there are mismatched materials used. There has been a large amount of recent research performed by the TriboMechaDynamics (TMD) community in defining accurate models of the nonlinear dynamics associated with the friction used in the mechanical joint [6–9]. This topic is difficult to model in even ideal conditions, and very little research has been focused on addressing the thermal properties of the mechanical joints. However, as a preliminary study, this work approaches the thermal properties from a pragmatic perspective of using simple methods to incorporate the thermal strain introduced by the temperature variations and material mismatched. This work is comprised of several components. Section 3.2 describes the tested scaled three-storey structure, the test bed and the Digital Twin Operational Platform (DTOP) used to facilitate in the testing, analysis and post-processing of both the experimental and numerical data. The results from the experimental testing and its post-processing are described in Sect. 3.3. To test various modelling techniques, two fidelities of models are compared with a simplified beam model, as described in Sect. 3.5, and a high-fidelity model is described in Sect. 3.6. A discussion of the various techniques and conclusions are presented in Sect. 3.7. 3.2 Three-Storey Structure and the Digital Twin Operational Platform One of the major components of this research is the thermal properties of the system of interest. For this work, the system is a scaled three-storey structure that is pictured in Fig. 3.1. This system is comprised of extruded T-slot aluminium that constructs the main floors with rolled steel structural supports at the corners of the system with a total height of nearly 2.5 metres tall. M. S. Bonney ( ) · D.Wagg Dynamics Research Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK e-mail: m.bonney@sheffield.ac.uk; david.wagg@sheffield.ac.uk © The Society for Experimental Mechanics, Inc. 2023 H. Y. Noh (eds.), Dynamics of Civil Structures, Volume 2, Conference Proceedings of the Society for Experimental Mechanics Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05449-5_3 23
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