IDENTIFYING THE DAMPING CONTRIBUTION OF BUILDING COMPONENTS BASED ON MEASURED TOP VIBRATION

Abstract

In this paper, a damping model for a high-rise building is introduced. This model is used to investigate the possibilities to identify the relative damping contribution of the internal material damping in building elements, energy loss at element interfaces and energy outflow at the interface with the ground. The building is modeled as an Euler-Bernoulli beam which is elastically supported at its base by a translational and rotation spring, including viscous damping elements. The beam has internal viscous material damping and is attached to a distributed viscous damper. Data obtained from conventional full scale measurements of the vibrations at the top of a high-rise building, is used to calibrate the model. Values of the model parameters which result in a best fit, are found from calculation of the least square error between the simulated and measured response. It is concluded that the conventional performed measurements don't provide enough data to uniquely determine the relative contribution of the different damping components. A new measurement method is needed in order to identify the relative contribution.