Evaluation of seismic response parameters for instrumented buildings

In this paper the optimality -criterion for the location of a limited number of recording sensors along the height of a multistorey building is applied to a set of multistorey frames characterized by different values of the height to width ratio. Nine multistorey frames characterized by an increasing number of storey from 4 to 20 have been studied. For the all frames responses have been assumed to be known only at location of recording sensors distributed according to the optimal pattern. The latter has been determined as a function of the modal characteristics of the frame according to the -criterion. Comparison between frames characterized by different values of the height to width ratio has shown that this parameters is scarcely influent on optimal locations of a given number of recording sensors. The latter seems to depend only on the total height of the frame and on the number of available sensors. For all the frames responses have been reconstructed at all the storeys and peak values of storey acceleration, displacement, shear and interstorey drift have been calculated and compared to those derived from “measured” responses. Comparison has shown that the agreement between calculated and real values increases with the total number of recording sensors. A remarkable improvement of the match is obtained for all the frames for an increase of the total number of recording sensors from 2 to 3 units that allows to model more accurately the second mode of the frames. Further increases in the number of sensors produce gradually decreasing betterment of the match between real and calculated response parameters. Results obtained from this analyses confirm that for multistorey buildings a number of sensors able to allow the dominant modes to be modeled through the spline shape function is enough to provide an excellent estimate of all the considered seismic response parameters.