Dynamic testing and structural identification of the Hypo Bank Office complex. Part II: Identification

The Hypo Bank headquarters complex, a structure formed by two adjacent seven-storey buildings, was subjected to a series of harmonic forced vibration tests in August 2005. In Part I of this research natural frequencies, damping factors and three-dimensional shapes of the first vibration modes of each building were estimated. In this paper the experimental characteristics are compared to those predicted by a preliminary finite element model. The properties of vibration modes with prevailing amplitudes along the longer side of the complex are described with poor precision. This large disagreement has suggested that, in spite of the presence of the seismic joint between the two buildings, some coupling through the joint should be considered in order to predict reasonably well the dynamic behavior of the whole complex.