A Novel Moving Load Integration Method for Real-Time Hybrid Shaking Table Test of High-Speed Maglev Vehicle–Bridge Interaction System

Real-time hybrid shaking table test for high-speed maglev vehicle–bridge interaction (VBI) system is an important method to study dynamic response of the system. Numerical experiments are usually conducted in advance to guarantee the test performed smoothly. This paper presents a novel moving load integration method combined with a truncated bridge model for fast calculation of bridge responses, and presents a framework for performing numerical experiment of a real-time hybrid test of VBI system. A realistic numerical experiment is conducted on a real-time simulator, i.e. xPC Target, integrating three commercial software, i.e. SIMPACK, ANSYS, and MATLAB-Simulink[Formula: see text], to model a real TR08 single-carriage maglev train, a 5-spans bridge and 28 shaking tables, respectively. The driving speed is 400–600[Formula: see text]km/h and the time step size in the test is 1/256[Formula: see text]s. The accuracy of moving load integration method with truncated bridge model is verified, the effects of speed on the dynamic responses of VBI systems are studied, the time delay of shaking tables and compensation algorithm is investigated, and the effects of local nonlinearity of the bridge on system responses are studied. This paper provides a practical method and valuable reference for the real-time hybrid shaking table test of vehicle–bridge coupled systems.