Torsional response of unique building

Abstract

Acceleration response records obtained during the October 1, 1987 Whittier‐Narrows earthquake ( M s = 5.6 ) "> ( M s = 5.6 ) from the 32‐story, vertically irregular 1100 Wilshire Finance Building, of which the cross section changes from a nominally rectangular shape to a triangular one, are analyzed. The building was instrumented with 21 channels of synchronized sensors, consisting of 12 uniaxial accelerometers deployed throughout the superstructure and connected to a central recording system and three triaxial strong‐motion accelerographs in the basement. At each of the four levels of the superstructure, three uniaxial accelerometers were deployed, two parallel and at a distance apart, and the third one orthogonal to the parallel pair. The records permit the identification of the predominantly coupled torsional‐translational response of the building and the associated frequency at approximately 0.7–0.8 Hz from the difference between accelerations recorded by the parallel pairs of accelerometers at different levels. This mode corresponds to the second torsional mode. A translational mode at 0.3 Hz is also identified from the records. The center of rigidity of any instrumented level is identified by minimizing the coherence between the relative accelerations and the translational acceleration. Employing system identification techniques provides the modal damping percentage for the second torsional mode as 6–7%.