The identification of damping ratios in buildings is a well-known problem and appears to be of important and crucial interest in the safety and serviceability design. When compared to an estimation of the stiffness, i.e. natural frequency, and mass, the damping ratio is the most difficult quantity to determine. Many previous studies have examined the characteristics of damping ratios from ambient vibration, but the measurement time is roughly within 2 hours. In this paper, characteristics of damping ratios and natural frequencies of 4 story RC building were investigated using long-term ambient vibration. Free vibrations were obtained using random decrement technique, and damping ratios were evaluated by the envelop function, continuous wavelet transform, and logarithmic decrement. It was found that although the natural frequencies show little variations with time, the damping ratios show some variations with time and the largest variations found in the damping ratios obtained from the continuous wavelet transform. The damping ratios from the envelop function showed the smallest mean and standard deviation. And the probability distribution of damping ratios seems to follow the logarithmic normal distribution.

In Seoul, total 27 places of foot-bridges were chosen to evaluate the damping ratio through vibration measurement by mobile-phone application. Model vibration test was performed to compare the natural frequency and damping ratio between the conventional accelerometer and mobile-phone application. Measured average damping was compared with the one of Bachmann. The relation between the damping ratio and span was also investigated. Measured average damping ratio was greater than that of Bachmann. It was shown that there is no distinct trend between damping and span.

주파수영역과 시간영역의 두가지 방법을 통하여 감쇠율을 분석하였다. 11층~19층 범위의 철근콘크리트 건물에 대하여 주파수 영역에서의 해석을 위한 상시진동과 시간영역에서의 해석을 위한 인력가진을 실시하였다. 하프파워법의 적용성을 검토하기 위하여 1024, 2048, 4096 세가지 앙상블 샘플사이즈에 대하여 분석하였다. 인력가진법에 의한 장변과 단변의 감쇠율은 각각 1.05%~1.22%과 1.16%~1.50%이다. 하프파워법은 감쇠율을 약간 과대평가할 수 있지만, 계측데이터의 길이를 가능한 길게 하여 bandwidth를 작게 하면 감쇠율 평가의 정밀도를 향상할 수 있었다.