ABSTRACT
Hence this paper aims to discuss the authors’ experience in automated model updating of a medium-rise building structure and provide useful tips to overcome the aforementioned inherent challenges in automated model updating of structures with similar characteristics. First, the paper demonstrates the importance of using the most appropriate initial FE model in automated model updating of a medium rise building structure to obtain satisfactory results. Then, it introduces a parametric study based approach coupled with systematic sensitivity analysis to identify the most effective ranges of the tuning parameters to maximise the correlation of the updated model and the actual structure whilst keeping the updated model physically realisable and meaningful. For demonstration purposes, a 10 story building structure at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is used as the test structure. This research is part of an on-going research program on structural identification and health monitoring of real civil structures at QUT (Kodikara, et al., 2016; Nguyen, et al., 2015)
2 TEST STRUCTURE
2.1 Overview
The structure used in this study is a 10 story benchmark building (called P block) which is the main part of the QUT Science and Engineering Centre
1 INTRODUCTION
The process of correcting modelling errors of a FE model by using test data and developing baseline FE models to accurately predict the dynamic or static behavior of a structure can be described as model updating (Jaishi & Ren, 2005). Among many model updating methods available, sensitivity based automated model updating techniques have proven to be very effective in real civil engineering applications for the last two decades. These methods first identify the uncertain parameters through a comprehensive sensitivity analysis and systematically change the parameters to minimise the discrepancies between FE model and test data often conducted using an iterative procedure (Živanović, et al., 2007).
