Novel Visualization of Building Earthquake Response Recorded by a Dense Network of Sensors

The strong motion records collected in full-scale structures provide the ultimate evidence of how real structures, in situ, respond to earthquakes. This paper presents a novel method for visualization, in three dimensions (3D), of the collective motion recorded by a dense array of sensors in a building. The method is based on one- and two-dimensional biharmonic spline interpolation of the motion recorded by multiple sensors on the same or multiple floors. It is demonstrated on novel data that have been recorded recently in a 50-story skyscraper, uniquely instrumented with multiple triaxial accelerometers per floor, approximately at every five floors above ground and at two basement levels, and with rotational seismometers and two borehole arrays measuring the motion of the soil very near the building foundation. The method is computationally efficient and suitable for real-time application and rapid assessment of structural health. The animations provide invaluable insight into the 3D structural response of the building as a whole, including wave propagation through the structure and the interplay between translations and rotations, which will be useful for testing existing and developing new methods for structural health monitoring of buildings and for the further development of building design codes. Animations of selected earthquakes can be found on YouTube at @TPYC-seismic.