Investigation of superstructure damping identification for the HDR containment building

A method for the estimation of first mode structural damping, developed by other investigators, was applied to shaker test data of the HDR containment building. Due to inadequate precision in the experimental phase measurements no valid results could be obtained. Based on modal analysis it was also noted that for systems such as the HDR building, contributions of higher modes are not negligible as was assumed in the original approach. Therefore, the procedure for the determination of superstructure damping using experimental data was extended to include the effects of higher modes. The extended method does not lead to any higher order nonlinear equations than the first mode approximation and was found to be as simple to apply as the original approach