On the evaluation of free vibration characteristics of containment building with a lower-order solid finite element

The main purpose of this paper is to provide the vibration characteristic of the containment building by using a lower-order solid finite element (FE). The 8-node solid FE is formulated with B bar method and the strain-displacement matrix based on B bar method is provided in this paper. The lumped mass matrix is derived by the special lumping technique and the subspace iteration method is adopted to calculate the natural frequencies of containment building. The sensitivity of FE mesh refinement to the natural frequencies is at first investigated to determine an appropriate FE mesh for the vibration analysis of containment building. The allowable size of artificial opening at the apex of containment building is then examined to facilitate the solid FE mesh generation. Finally, the natural frequencies and the mode shapes of containment building are calculated and proposed as a benchmark