• Wind and Structures
• /
• v.37 no.6
• /
• pp.445-460
• /
• 2023

Accurate estimation of modal parameters (i.e., natural frequency, damping ratio) of tall buildings is of great importance to their structural design, structural health monitoring, vibration control, and state assessment. Based on the combination of variational mode decomposition, smoothed discrete energy separation algorithm-1, and Half-cycle energy operator (VMD-SH), this paper presents a method for structural modal parameter estimation. The variational mode decomposition is proved to be effective and reliable for decomposing the mixed-signal with low frequencies and damping ratios, and the validity of both smoothed discrete energy separation algorithm-1 and Half-cycle energy operator in the modal identification of a single modal system is verified. By incorporating these techniques, the VMD-SH method is able to accurately identify and extract the various modes present in a signal, providing improved insights into its underlying structure and behavior. Subsequently, a numerical study of a four-story frame structure is conducted using the Newmark-β method, and it is found that the relative errors of natural frequency and damping ratio estimated by the presented method are much smaller than those by traditional methods, validating the effectiveness and accuracy of the combined method for the modal identification of the multi-modal system. Furthermore, the presented method is employed to estimate modal parameters of a full-scale tall building utilizing acceleration responses. The identified results verify the applicability and accuracy of the presented VMD-SH method in field measurements. The study demonstrates the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed VMD-SH method in accurately estimating modal parameters of tall buildings from acceleration response data.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.31 no.2
• /
• pp.155-169
• /
• 2023

The quasi-static component of the moving vehicle-induced dynamic response is promising in damage detection as it is sensitive to bridge damage but insensitive to environmental changes. However, accurate extraction of quasi-static component from the dynamic response is challenging especially when the vehicle velocity is high. This paper proposes an adaptive quasi-static component extraction method based on the modified variational mode decomposition (VMD) algorithm. Firstly the analytical solutions of the frequency components caused by road surface roughness, high-frequency dynamic components controlled by bridge natural frequency and quasi-static components in the vehicle-induced bridge response are derived. Then a modified VMD algorithm based on particle swarm algorithm (PSO) and mutual information entropy (MIE) criterion is proposed to adaptively extract the quasi-static components from the vehicle-induced bridge dynamic response. Numerical simulations and real bridge tests are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed extraction method. The results indicate that the improved VMD algorithm could extract the quasi-static component of the vehicle-induced bridge dynamic response with high accuracy in the presence of the road surface roughness and measurement noise.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.55 no.3
• /
• pp.968-980
• /
• 2023

The dynamic structural responses are sensitive to the time-frequency content of seismic waves, and seismic input motions in time-history analysis are usually required to be compatible with design response spectra according to nuclear codes. In order to generate spectra-compatible input motions while maintaining the intrinsic non-stationarity of seismic waves, an improved time-domain approach is proposed in this paper. To maintain the nonstationary characteristics of the given seismic waves, a new time-frequency envelope function is constructed using the Hilbert amplitude spectrum. Based on the intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) obtained from given seismic waves through variational mode decomposition, a new corrective time history is constructed to locally modify the given seismic waves. The proposed corrective time history and time-frequency envelope function are unique for each earthquake records as they are extracted from the given seismic waves. In addition, a dimension reduction iterative technique is presented herein to simultaneously superimpose corrective time histories of all the damping ratios at a specific frequency in the time domain according to optimal weights, which are found by the genetic algorithm (GA). Examples are presented to show the capability of the proposed approach in generating spectra-compatible time histories, especially in maintaining the nonstationary characteristics of seismic records. And numerical results reveal that the modified time histories generated by the proposed method can obtain similar dynamic behaviors of AP1000 nuclear power plant with the natural seismic records. Thus, the proposed method can be efficiently used in the design practices.