TESTING BUILDINGS USING AMBIENT VIBRATIONS FOR EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING: A EUROPEAN REVIEW

The objective of this paper is to present an inventory of practices and progress made in recent years on the use of ambient vibrations for Earthquake Engineering. We focus on the expertise acquired in Europe, with links to the activities observed in the rest of the world. For this, a first introduction in the European context will present the state of knowledge and current practices for Earthquake Engineering. The main interest of ambient vibration measurements performed in a structure is to allow the representation of its elastic dynamic response, avoiding any hypothesis as to the quality of its materials, its design or the soil-structure interaction. Three topics will be discussed: (1) the relationship between height and period of buildings, compared to the seismic code relationships, (2) integrating ambient vibrations for seismic vulnerability assessment, and (3) the variation of period and damping according to the state of the building and the level of shaking.