Vibration measurement and structural performance evaluation of a 17th century timber guest house in Japan

Abstract

Abstract To clarify the actual structural performance of an existing traditional timber structure in Japan, vibration measurements were carried out at a 17th century timber guest house (Gekkouden of Gokokuji temple). The results of the micro tremor measurement, earthquake monitoring, and analysis are discussed in this paper. For minute angles of less than 1/5000 rad, it was revealed through earthquake monitoring that each dominant frequency was strongly dependent on the vibration amplitude. It was also confirmed that the dominant frequencies of the lower vibration modes in 1/1000 rad declined to 65%‐75% of the frequencies obtained through micro tremor measurement. We propose a structural model that consists of a joint spring, column, beam, and hanging wall, based on previously reported experiments. In this study, it was clarified that the dominant frequencies determined by the analysis of the proposed structural model were in good agreement with the frequencies obtained through earthquake monitoring.

Keywords

• dominant frequency
• earthquake monitoring
• eigenvalue analysis
• micro tremor measurement
• nonlinearity