Full-scale Monitoring of a Tall, Slender Building with Coupling Viscoelastic Dampers

Tall, slender buildings are sensitive to dynamic vibrations caused by wind, and the design of the building may be governed by occupant motion perception. A method to control dynamic vibrations is to increase the damping of the structure, which may be accomplished by the addition of a supplemental damping system. A novel system, the Viscoelastic Coupling Damper (VCD), was implemented for the first time in a tall, slender building which was under construction during the completion of this thesis. This building was the subject of a year-long plus monitoring program where output-only system identification algorithms were applied to track the development of the dynamic properties through the construction of the building. Additionally, several large amplitude wind events occurred during the program allowing for the tracking of amplitude-dependent phenomenon. The role of the VCD system was evaluated, and numerical finite-element models were constructed with reference to the experimental resultsM.A.S