NTCP: A Grid Service for Remote Control Systems

Traditionally, earthquake engineers have simulated the effects of ground motion on structures using one of two basic approaches: using computational simulations or using physical simulations. More recently, earthquake engineers have begun doing hybrid experiments: coupled computational and physical simulations in which one part of a structure is modeled computationally and another part is modeled as a physical experiment. The computational and physical simulations are run simultaneously; the results of both the computational and physical component for one time-step are used to determine the inputs to each for the next time-step. Hybrid experiments have generally been tightly coupled, with the computational system and the physical control system communicating via a shared-memory backbone.