Full-scale measurements of wind effects and modal parameter identification of Yingxian wooden tower

Abstract

The Yingxian wooden tower in China is currently the tallest wooden tower in the world. It was built in 1056 AD and is 65.86 m high. Field measurements of wind speed and wind-induced response of this tower are conducted. The wind characteristics, including the average wind speed, wind direction, turbulence intensity, gust factor, turbulence integral length scale and velocity spectrum are investigated. The power spectral density and the root-mean-square wind-induced acceleration are analyzed. The structural modal parameters of this tower are identified with two different methods, including the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) combined with the Random Decrement Technique (RDT) and Hilbert transform technique, and the stochastic subspace identification (SSI) method. Results show that strong wind is coming predominantly from the West-South of the tower which is in the same direction as the inclination of the structure. The Von Karman spectrum can describe the spectrum of wind speed well. Wind-induced torsional vibration obviously occurs in this tower. The natural frequencies identified by EMD, RDT and Hilbert Transform are close to those identified by SSI method, but there is obvious difference between the identified damping ratios for the first two modes.