Wind-induced response characteristics of a tall building from GPS and accelerometer measurements

The main objectives of the research are to characterize the wind-induced resonant and slowly-varying (quasi-static) responses of a tall building under ambient wind excitations based on GPS measurements. The equipment used includes two sets of orthogonally aligned accelerometers, two GPS receivers and an ultrasonic anemometer. The natural fre-quencies of the wind-induced vibration of the tall building are determined by carrying out spectral analysis of the meas-ured time series of acceleration. The time series are also used to estimate the structural damping with the random dec-rement technique (RDT). The results show that GPS can be effectively used to measure the resonant and slowly-varying responses of tall buildings with 3D mode shapes under wind excitations. The results from the GPS and the accelerome-ters agree well with each other in both the time and frequency domains.