Dynamic behaviour of a 13-story reinforced concrete building under ambient vibration, forced vibration, and earthquake excitation

This paper presents a unique study of dynamic behaviour of a full-scale 13-story reinforced concrete building under forced vibration, ambient vibration, and distal earthquake-induced excitation. Initially, an eccentric mass shaker located on the upper floor of the building was used to excite the building while instrumented with eight accelerometers. Then, ambient vibrations induced by traffic and wind were recorded over a period of two weeks, utilizing over 40 tri-axial accelerometers. During the sampling period, the building was excited by a M6.5 earthquake and high-quality vibration data sets were recorded. Modal parameters of the building were identified with a range of frequency and time domain system identification (SI) methods, and the influence of excitation force characteristics on performance of various techniques was also investigated. A finite element model of the building was developed using SAP2000 to compare modal properties to the identified counterparts from experiments. Results showed a strong correlation between modal parameters identified by different SI methods, and all techniques provided accurate estimation of modal parameters when used with output-only data. Modal parameters determined from ambient vibrations were comparable to their forced vibration counterparts, providing evidence that ambient vibration testing can be as effective as forced vibration testing in determining modal parameters for similar size structures. The near stationary vibration data can produce accurate estimation of modal parameters. However, further study is required to facilitate application of output-only SI techniques with non-stationary data. There was a good match between peak displacement amplitudes obtained by the numerical model and those experimentally measured at different excitation frequencies. This match demonstrated the accuracy of the finite element model to predict realistic dynamic behaviour of the building under various harmonic excitation forces.