Damping Identification Analysis of Membrane Structures under the Wind Load by Wavelet Transform

In this paper, we take advantage of Wavelet Transform to identify damping ratios of membrane structures under wind action. Due to the lightweight and flexibility of membrane structures, they are very sensitive to the wind load, and show a type of fluid-structure interaction phenomenon simultaneously. In this study, we firstly obtain the responses of an air-supported membrane structure by ADINA with the consideration of this characteristic, and then conduct Wavelet Transform on these responses. Based on the Wavelet Transform, damping ratios could be obtained from the slope of Wavelet Transform in a semi-logarithmic scale at a certain dilation coefficient. According to this principle, damping ratios could eventually be obtained. There are two numerical examples in this study. The first one is a simulated signal, which is used to verify the accuracy of the Wavelet Transform method. The second one is an air-supported membrane structure under wind action, damping ratios obtained from this method is about 0.05~0.09. The Wavelet Transform method could be regarded as a very good method for the the damping analysis, especially for the large spatial structures whose natural frequencies are closely spaced.