ABSTRACT
This paper presents a comparison of analytical predictions of the building period of vibration with a series of field tests; ambient vibration, forced vibration and pull & release.
2 BUILDING STUDIED
2.1 Building description
A 35 × 100 × 7.31 m single-storey commercial building (under construction) located near Montreal, Quebec, Canada was investigated (Figure 1). The structure consisted of steel
1 INTRODUCTION
Single-storey braced frame buildings are widely used for light commercial and industrial structures in North America. The lateral load resisting system also includes a steel roof deck diaphragm system to transfer loads to the bracing bents. The roof diaphragm is made of thin steel panels connected to each other by sidelap fasteners and to the supporting steel framework by structural fasteners. The diaphragm exhibits in-plane flexibility that increases the drift and lengthens the building period of vibration. Past analytical studies have shown that the dynamic response of structures with flexible roofs differs from that of structures with rigid diaphragms (Tena-Colunga & Abrams, 1996; Tremblay & Stiemer, 1996). This was confirmed by shake table tests on a reduced scale model (Tremblay et al., 2000). Such an increase in period can lead to a considerable reduction in seismic demand (Tremblay & Rogers, 2005).
