Vibration measurement and monitoring play a pivotal role in the field of civil engineering. Buildings and other structures may be subjected to vibrations from different sources, such as road traffic, rail traffic, nearby worksites or mines; in the case of large structures such as bridges, levees and high-rises, seismic events and strong winds.
The vibrations produced by these elements can cause structural damage and create distress to nearby residents.
Present and future laws and technological advancements require both the static and dynamic aspects of buildings to be planned and verified. In order to investigate a structure’s dynamic behavior, it is necessary to understand how the structure responds when subjected to dynamic external forces such as, in the case of buildings or civil engineering structures, the spectrum of seismic responses, that is ordinary for the site on which the structure is built; or for certain structures, the effect of the wind.
The task here comes down to identifying the relevant main modes of the structure, defined in terms of modal forms (movement of the structure), the structure’s frequencies (which frequencies are associated with specific movements), and the damping characteristics that are indicative of the structure’s capacity to dampen the effects of vibrations linked to external forces.
Therefore, the overall behavior of a given structure consists of the combination of its own vibration modes, when subjected to an excitation force.
The construction of a civil structure needs to include the planning phase, the experimental verification that allows to validate the relevant theoretical model, and the post-construction adherence to planning parameters.
Sequoia IT offers advanced solutions for this monitoring field, such as the GEA Line.
