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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 57
DEVELOPMENTS IN COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS WITH HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping
Paper X.1

Shaking the Bell Tower - Dynamic Experiments to Obtain a Finite Element Model

V. Zabel and C. Bucher

Fakultät Bauingenieurwesen, Institut für Strukturmechanik, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, Germany

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
V. Zabel, C. Bucher, "Shaking the Bell Tower - Dynamic Experiments to Obtain a Finite Element Model", in B.H.V. Topping, (Editor), "Developments in Computational Mechanics with High Performance Computing", Civil-Comp Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp 187-191, 1999. doi:10.4203/ccp.57.10.1
Abstract
The numerical description of the structural behaviour of an existing, damaged structure is a challenging engineering task. The basis for the solution of this problem is the evaluation of the actual behaviour on site using advanced experimental and numerical techniques. In this study, the severely damaged bell tower of the church of Krölpa (Thuringia) was investigated. By utilizing an FEM-package several natural frequencies with the corresponding vibration modes, transfer functions and modal damping ratios were obtained from the measurement data. It became obvious that the dynamic behaviour of the structure depends not only on the frequency but also on the amplitude and direction of the exciting force. The presented methods appeared to be suitable tools for the identification of dynamic system properties even though difficulties in the numerical description of the nonlinear effects remained.

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