Health Monitoring of an Instrumented SRMF Building using Earthquake Data

This paper is a study of a six-story welded steel moment-resisting frame instrumented by California Strong Motion Instrumentation Program. Several earthquakes had shaken the building, and its response of strong motion data recorded during the earthquakes were made available. In particular, the Whittier Narrows(October 1987), Sierra Madre (June 1991), Northridge (January 1994) and Chino Hills (July 2008) earthquakes were considered in the studies reported here. The paper investigates the capability of input–output system identification methods, namely eigensystem realization algorithm with data correlation, and observer Kalman filter identification, in identifying dynamic characteristics of typical office building structures subjected to strong ground motion. It explores the possibility to extend the above system identification procedures to near-real-time estimation of the building response under future earthquakes in order to estimate the likelihood of brittle damage in welded beam to column connections. The modal identification results are compared with those obtained using the spectral analysis and the deterministic-stochastic subspace identification method to verify the accuracy of the identified modal parameters. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.