Abstract

VALDES GONZALEZ, Jesús; DE LA COLINA MARTINEZ, Jaime  and  GONZALEZ PEREZ, Carlos Alberto. Seismic damage detection of a reinforced concrete tridimensional frame using ambiental and forced vibration tests. Ing. sísm [online]. 2015, n.92, pp.22-46. ISSN 0185-092X.

This paper presents an experimental study conducted on a tridimensional two-story reinforced-concrete frame, which was progressively damaged until it reached a significant structural damage. The frame was subjected to different dynamic load stages, representatives of increasing intensities of the earthquake ground motion. The frame was excited with a testing pendulum, which is a device that excited the structure attached to the pendulum platform with a harmonic motion along one horizontal direction at selected frequencies. For each excitation level, forced and ambient vibration tests were conducted and it was possible to characterize the concrete frame damage as a function of the correlation between two transfer functions, corresponding to the initial undamaged condition of the frame and subsequent damage stages.

Keywords : seismic damage; damage detection; experimental tests; ambient vibration; transfer functions.