Investigation of time-varying natural frequencies of high-rise buildings under harsh excitations using a high-resolution combined scheme

High-rise buildings subjected to harsh excitations like typhoons or earthquakes usually present nonlinear features and exhibit time-varying behavior of structural modal properties. Under such circumstances, variation in structural natural frequencies can serve as a critical indicator for structural condition assessment. However, limited by noises contained in measurement records and time-frequency resolution of signal analysis, most instantaneous frequency identification methods are difficult to provide accurate estimation of time-varying natural frequencies of high-rise buildings. To address this issue, a combined scheme based on the variational mode decomposition method and adaptive superlets transform (VMD-ASLT) for time-varying natural frequency identification is presented in this paper. Through numerical simulation studies and field measurements of dynamic responses of a 508 m high skyscraper, the noise robustness and accuracy of the combined scheme for time-varying structural natural frequency estimation are validated. Moreover, the combined scheme is further utilized to investigate the time-varying features of natural frequencies of the skyscraper under typhoon and earthquake excitations. This paper aims to provide an effective tool for time-varying structural natural frequency estimation and further reveal the variation of the dynamical behavior of high-rise buildings under harsh excitations.