Estimation of story drift directly from acceleration records for post‐earthquake safety evaluations of buildings

Abstract

AbstractStory and roof drift ratios play a key role in the assessment of the structural damage of a building if structural displacement can be measured or calculated. In general, for building seismic monitoring, accelerometers are used to compile the responses for analysis instead of using displacement meters because they are more cost effective. Therefore, an accurate estimate of the displacement response of a building using acceleration measurements will be helpful for the rapid assessment of the damage to its structure after an earthquake. In this study, the combination of an algorithm with singular spectrum analysis (SSA) and an integration scheme is proposed to estimate structural displacement directly from acceleration measurements. The SSA was conducted with varying sizes of the data trajectory matrix, using the approximation part as a weighting factor and the detailed part to integrate for the temporary displacement, to obtain a final weighted temporary displacement. The proposed algorithm was verified using the shaking table test data for four large‐scale reinforced concrete frames. Through the proposed method, both the displacement waveform and the induced residual displacement after earthquake excitations can be estimated. The application of the proposed algorithm to building seismic response data is also discussed.