Investigation on the Seismic Damage and Identification of Lateral Stiffness for Ancient Timber Structures

ABSTRACT This paper investigates the seismic damage and identification of lateral stiffness for ancient timber structures. Based on the shaking table test of a palace‐style timber structure, the lateral displacement responses, interstory equivalent lateral stiffness (IELS), and sensitivity of lateral displacement to degradation of IELS were analyzed to investigate the degradation and identification of IELS. The state and observation equations of a simplified mechanical model of the timber frame considering the friction slipping of the column base were predicted. Considering the noise disturbance in the test, the IELS of the model was identified by the partial least squares–singular value decomposition (PLS‐SVD) and extended Kalman filter (EKF) method. Results shown that the ratio of the IELS of the column frame layer to Ru‐Fu layer decreased as the seismic damage increased, and the peak lateral displacement was more sensitive to the damage of the column frame layer than the Ru‐Fu layer. Under nondamage conditions, the identification error of the IELS was about 10%, while the error ranged from 15% to 20% under damage conditions. Through the identification of the equivalent lateral stiffness of the Xi'an bell tower, it was validated that the hybrid method is effective in monitoring the IELS of ancient timber structures.