• Journal of Korean Association for Spatial Structures
• /
• v.18 no.1
• /
• pp.77-84
• /
• 2018

The identification of damping ratios in buildings is a well-known problem and appears to be of important and crucial interest in the safety and serviceability design. When compared to an estimation of the stiffness, i.e. natural frequency, and mass, the damping ratio is the most difficult quantity to determine. Many previous studies have examined the characteristics of damping ratios from ambient vibration, but the measurement time is roughly within 2 hours. In this paper, characteristics of damping ratios and natural frequencies of 4 story RC building were investigated using long-term ambient vibration. Free vibrations were obtained using random decrement technique, and damping ratios were evaluated by the envelop function, continuous wavelet transform, and logarithmic decrement. It was found that although the natural frequencies show little variations with time, the damping ratios show some variations with time and the largest variations found in the damping ratios obtained from the continuous wavelet transform. The damping ratios from the envelop function showed the smallest mean and standard deviation. And the probability distribution of damping ratios seems to follow the logarithmic normal distribution.

• Transactions of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering
• /
• v.19 no.3
• /
• pp.294-300
• /
• 2009

In high speed railway bridges, dynamic analysis is important because of high passing velocity and moving load at the regular intervals, and damping ratio is a major parameter to predict dynamic responses. In this paper, damping ratios were estimated by using half power band width method and extended Kalman filter according to acceleration signal conditions, and a relationship between estimated damping ratios and representative values of bridge vibration was derived. From the results, damping ratios estimated from total ambient vibration were more reliable than only free vibration part. In case of using extended Kalman filter, the estimated damping ratios varying with RMQ(root mean quad), as one of representative values of bridge vibration, have more feasible trend. Thus, it is shown that further studies on reliabilities of estimated damping ratios are needed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.349-365
• /
• 2013

Structures consisting of concrete and steel parts, which are irregular in damping ratios are investigated. This investigation is a code-based seismic design of such structures. Several practical difficulties encountered, due to inherent differences in the nature of dynamic response of each part, and the different damping ratios of the two parts. These structures are irregular in damping ratios and have complex modes of vibration so that their analysis cannot be handled with the readily available commercial software. Therefore, this work aims to provide simple yet sufficiently accurate constant values of equivalent damping ratios applied to the whole structure for handling the damping irregularity of such structures. The results show that the equivalent damping ratio changes with the height of the building and the kind of the structural system, but it is constant for all accelerations values. Thus, available software SAP2000 applied for seismic analysis, design and the provisions of existing seismic codes. Finally, evaluation of different kinds of structural system used in this research to find the most energy dissipating one found by finding the best value of quality coefficient.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
• /
• 2008.06a
• /
• pp.93-100
• /
• 2008

Recently, due to the advanced measurement techniques, long-term health monitoring systems have been frequently applied to existing bridges. It is known that damping ratios as one of dynamic properties would be an important parameter for evaluating the bridge condition. However, damping ratios may be normally varied depending on the external loading effects on bridges. In general, both the logarithmic decrement and the half-power band width method as a conventional method can be simply used for evaluating the damping ratios accurately when bridge response signals are measured under free vibration conditions. In this study, the Hilbert-Huang transform and the extended Kalman filter were applied to evaluate the damping ratio by using the bridge acceleration signals measured under ambient vibration condition. From the results under ambient vibration condition of bridges, it was examined that the damping ratios evaluated from both the Hilbert-Huang transform and the extended Kalman filter could be more reliable than those from conventional methods.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.417-434
• /
• 2002

This paper explores the possibility of using a combination of the empirical mode decomposition (EMD) and the Hilbert transform (HT), termed the Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) method, to identify the modal damping ratios of the structure with closely spaced modal frequencies. The principle of the HHT method and the procedure of using the HHT method for modal damping ratio identification are briefly introduced first. The dynamic response of a two-degrees-of-freedom (2DOF) system under an impact load is then computed for a wide range of dynamic properties from well-separated modal frequencies to very closely spaced modal frequencies. The natural frequencies and modal damping ratios identified by the HHT method are compared with the theoretical values and those identified using the fast Fourier transform (FFT) method. The results show that the HHT method is superior to the FFT method in the identification of modal damping ratios of the structure with closely spaced modes of vibration. Finally, a 36-storey shear building with a 4-storey light appendage, having closely spaced modal frequencies and subjected to an ambient ground motion, is analyzed. The modal damping ratios identified by the HHT method in conjunction with the random decrement technique (RDT) are much better than those obtained by the FFT method. The HHT method performing in the frequency-time domain seems to be a promising tool for system identification of civil engineering structures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
• /
• 2002.05a
• /
• pp.109-114
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this study is to propose the general method for evaluating the equivalent damping ratios of a structure with supplemental response control dampers. We define Lyapunov function of which derivative can be expressed in autoregressive form and evaluate the equivalent damping ratios by using Lyapunov function and its derivative. This Lyapunov function may be called as generalized structural energy. In this study, it is assumed that the response of a structure is stationary random process and control dampers do not affect the modal shapes of a structure, and the structure has proportional damping. Proposed method can be used to get the equivalent damping ratios of a structure with non-linear control dampers such as friction dampers as well as linear control dampers. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method. we evaluate the equivalent damping ratios of a structure with viscous dampers. AMDs. and friction dampers. The equivalent damping ratios from proposed method are compared to those from eigenvalue analysis for linear control dampers. and those from time history analysis for non-linear control dampers. respectively.

• Wind and Structures
• /
• v.21 no.2
• /
• pp.159-182
• /
• 2015

This study focuses on the amplitude dependency of damping of tall structures by the random decrement technique (RDT). Many researchers have adopted RDT to establish the amplitude dependency of damping ratios in super-tall buildings under strong wind loads. In this study, a series of simulated examples were analyzed to examine the reliability of this method. Results show that damping ratios increase as vibration amplitudes increase in several cases; however, the damping ratios in the simulated signals were preset as constants. This finding reveals that this method and the derived amplitude-dependent damping ratio characteristics are unreliable. Moreover, this method would obviously yield misleading results if the simulated signals contain Gaussian white noise. Full-scale measurements on a super-tall building were conducted during four typhoons, and the recorded data were analyzed to observe the amplitude dependency of damping ratio. Relatively wide scatter is observed in the resulting damping ratios, and the damping ratios do not appear to have an obvious nonlinear relationship with vibration amplitude. Numerical simulation and field measurement results indicate that the widely-used method for establishing the amplitude-dependent damping characteristics of super-tall buildings and the conclusions derived from it might be questionable at the least. More field-measured data must be collected under strong wind loads, and the damping characteristics of super-tall buildings should be investigated further.

• Wind and Structures
• /
• v.8 no.5
• /
• pp.309-324
• /
• 2005

Aerodynamic damping often plays an important role in estimations of wind induced dynamic responses of super high-rise buildings. Across- and along-wind aerodynamic damping ratios of a square super high-rise building with a height of 300 m are identified with the Random Decrement technique (RDT) from random vibration responses of the SDOF aeroelastic model in simulated wind fields. Parametric studies on effects of reduced wind velocity, terrain type and structural damping ratio on the aerodynamic damping ratios are further performed. Finally formulas of across- and along-wind aerodynamic damping ratios of the square super high-rise building are derived with curve fitting technique and accuracy of the formulas is verified.

• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
• /
• 2002.10a
• /
• pp.370-377
• /
• 2002

Hwang et al (2001) proposed a new method for an evaluation of equivalent damping ratios of a linear structure with linear or nonlinear damping devices. This procedure has a disadvantage that it requires time history analysis for the whole system including damping devices, which may be troublesome for practical application. To tackle this problem closed form formulas for equivalent damping ratios are proposed in this study. It is assumed that the responses of MDOF system can be reproduced by an equivalent SDOF system which vibrates in a fundamental mode. The numerical analyses of a ten-story building equipped with linear viscous damper or active mass damper or friction damper show the effectiveness of equivalent SDOF model and closed form formulas.

• Architectural research
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.7-14
• /
• 2009

In this paper, we take advantage of Wavelet Transform to identify damping ratios of membrane structures under wind action. Due to the lightweight and flexibility of membrane structures, they are very sensitive to the wind load, and show a type of fluid-structure interaction phenomenon simultaneously. In this study, we firstly obtain the responses of an air-supported membrane structure by ADINA with the consideration of this characteristic, and then conduct Wavelet Transform on these responses. Based on the Wavelet Transform, damping ratios could be obtained from the slope of Wavelet Transform in a semi-logarithmic scale at a certain dilation coefficient. According to this principle, damping ratios could eventually be obtained. There are two numerical examples in this study. The first one is a simulated signal, which is used to verify the accuracy of the Wavelet Transform method. The second one is an air-supported membrane structure under wind action, damping ratios obtained from this method is about 0.05~0.09. The Wavelet Transform method could be regarded as a very good method for the the damping analysis, especially for the large spatial structures whose natural frequencies are closely spaced.