Dynamic Testing and Structural Identification of the Hypo Bank Office Complex. II: Identification

Abstract

The Hypo Bank headquarters complex, a structure formed by two adjacent seven-story buildings, was subjected to a series of harmonic forced vibration tests in August 2005. In Part I of this research, the natural frequencies, damping factors, and three-dimensional shapes of the first vibration modes of each building were estimated. In this paper, the experimental characteristics are compared with those predicted by a preliminary finite-element model. The properties of vibration modes with prevailing amplitudes along the longer side of the complex are described with poor precision. This large disagreement has suggested that, in spite of the presence of the seismic joint between the two buildings, some coupling through the joint should be considered to predict the dynamic behavior of the whole complex reasonably well.