Operational modal analysis for estimating the dynamic properties of a stadium structure during a football game

Abstract

During a football game, the ambient vibrations at the roof of a football stadium were recorded. A very large data set consisting of 4 hours of data, sampled at 80 Hz, is available. By a data reduction procedure, the complete data set could be analysed at once in a very short time. The data set was also split in shorter segments corresponding to certain events before, during and after the game to investigate the influence of varying operational conditions on the dynamic properties. As the structural vibrations were caused by unmeasurable wind and crowd excitation, Operational Modal Analysis has to be applied to find the dynamic characteristics of the structure. The new operational PolyMAX parameter estimation method is used and compared with Stochastic Subspace Identification. Stochastic Subspace Identification requires the correlations between the responses as primary data, whereas PolyMAX operates on spectra or half spectra (i.e. the Fourier transform of the positive time lags of the correlation functions). The main advantage of PolyMAX is that it yields extremely clear stabilisation diagrams, making an automation of the parameter identification process rather straightforward. This enables a continuous monitoring of the dynamic properties of a structure. © 2007 - IOS Press and the authors. All rights reserved.