Damping Identification in Buildings from Earthquake Records

Abstract

It is shown that the Fisher information on damping contained in seismic response is small and, as a consequence, identified damping ratios are realizations from a distribution with high variance. Predictive expressions with reasonable confidence intervals can be generated, however, if sufficient data is available. In this study 122 responses from concrete buildings, 81 from steel, 26 for masonry and 10 from wood structures are used to identify damping ratios using a subspace algorithm.