Time-varying wind load identification from structural responses

This research identifies the time-varying wind load from the responses of a structure. The fluctuating wind speed process is simulated as an ergodic multivariate stochastic process. The identification equation is formulated in state space, and it is solved with regularization to obtain the wind load from simulated structural responses. A modified iteration scheme is further proposed to improve the identified results. A 50 m guyed mast is selected as an example to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Numerical simulations indicate that the proposed method can be used to identify wind load accurately and effectively over the full height of the structure from the structural displacement or strain responses, and only two displacement or strain responses in two orthogonal directions at a reference level are needed to obtain accurate results.