Seismic Damage Detection of a Full-Scale Shaking Table Test Structure

A series of full-scale tests was conducted on the E-Defense shaking table facilities in Japan to simulate various levels of realistic seismic damage in a high-rise structural steel building. During the shaking table tests, the specimen experienced damage of the concrete slabs, beam-to-column connections, and nonstructural walls. The densely recorded test data of global and local structural deformation and the extensive acceleration records provide a unique benchmark case for evaluating the effectiveness of vibration-based damage diagnosis methods. Dynamic properties of the specimen were extracted from floor accelerations under the white noise excitations by the frequency response function curve-fitting method and autoregressive with exogenous term method. The natural frequencies of the structure decreased on average 4.1, 5.4, and 11.9% after three levels of seismic excitation, respectively, because of increasing extent of structural and nonstructural damage. The analysis of the vibration data shows that the mode shapes changed very little because the damage was distributed over the entire specimen rather than being concentrated on one floor or story for the high-rise moment frame building.