Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

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Time-varying wind load identification from structural responses

S.S. Lawa,∗, J.Q. Bub, X.Q. Zhua
a Civil and Structural Engineering Department, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hunghom, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China
b Shijiazhuang Railway Institute, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, People’s Republic of China

Received 3 March 2005; received in revised form 9 May 2005; accepted 9 May 2005

Abstract

This research identifies the time-varying wind load from the responses of a structure. The fluctuating wind speed process is simulated
as an ergodic multivariate stochastic process. The identification equation is formulated in state space, and it is solved with regularization to
obtain the wind load from simulated structural responses. A modified iteration scheme is further proposed to improve the identified results.
A 50 m guyed mast is selected as an example to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method. Numerical simulations indicate that
the proposed method can be used to identify wind load accurately and effectively over the full height of the structure from the structural
displacement or strain responses, and only two displacement or strain responses in two orthogonal directions at a reference level are needed
to obtain accurate results.
© 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Dynamic; Wind load; Guyed mast; Response; Finite element model; Equivalent model; Displacement; Regularization; Simulation; Identification

1. Introduction In general, it is very difficult to measure the external ap-

Wind load is one of the important design loads for
civil engineering structures [1–3]. For long span bridges,
tall buildings and high towers or mast structures, wind
load may be taken as a critical loading, and complicated
dynamic wind load effects control the structural design
of the structure. Therefore knowledge of the dynamic
characteristics of an important structure under wind loading
becomes a requirement in engineering design and in
academic study [2]. In most structural design process [4],
the wind load is usually based on the basic wind pressure
calculated from the long term records of wind speed and
direction data in the area where the structure is built, and
the statistical information, considering the surface roughness
of the ground, coefficient of the shape of the structure for
the wind load, coefficient of wind pressure variation with
height and the magnifying effect caused by the fluctuating
wind components, etc.
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +852 2766 6062; fax: +852 2334 6389.
E-mail address: cesslaw@polyu.edu.hk (S.S. Law).
plied force on a structure in real time, while response mea-
surement is more accurate than that of the force. Therefore
time-varying force identification from measured responses
has been the main stream of indirect methods for force mea-
surement. Chen and Li [5] estimate the wind load acting
on a shear building system using a general statistical aver-
age algorithm based on the system responses, including the
displacements, velocities and accelerations from all degrees
of freedom (DOFs), and with unknown structural parame-
ters. Force identification, especially moving force identifica-
tion from bridge responses, has been studied in the last two
decades [6,7]. The wind action on a structure is very similar
to that with moving vehicles passing on top of a bridge deck.
When a proper wind load model is adopted, the responses of
the structure can be formulated explicitly as a function of the
wind load, and the wind load can then be identified from the
structural responses in the inverse analysis.
On the basis of the above discussions, the aim of this
study is to identify the wind loads acting on a structure
from the structural responses. This may be beneficial to the
analysis of the wind load and the dynamic characteristics of
structure under the wind effect. The fluctuating wind speed

0141-0296/$ - see front matter © 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.engstruct.2005.05.007
 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598 1587
 2α
process is simulated as an ergodic multivariate stochastic where Cm (z) = 12 ρ µs (z)A(z) zz is the coefficient of
process. The identification equation is formulated in state
mean wind load, which depends on the reference height
space, and it is solved with regularization to obtain the
wind load from simulated structural responses. A modified   height of the selected level, C f 1 (z) =
and the vertical
α
iteration scheme is further proposed to improve the identified ρ µs (z)A(z) zz and C f 2 = 12 ρµs (z)A(z) are similarly
results. A 50 m guyed mast is selected as an example defined coefficients for the fluctuating wind load. Benfratello
for validating the effectiveness of the proposed method. et al. [10], after analyzing the stochastic response of a SDOF
The guyed mast is modeled by equivalent beam–column structure subject to wind action, concluded that neglecting
elements for the mast and truss elements for the guys. The the quadratic pressure term of the fluctuating wind speed
connections between the guys and beam–column elements could not lead to accurate results. The fluctuating wind
are assumed to be rigid links, which preserve the guys’ speed is simulated as an ergodic multivariate stochastic
eccentricities. And a static reduction technique is used process, and the fast Fourier transform is needed to
to condense the slave degrees of freedom. Numerical estimate the fluctuating wind speed components acting
simulations indicate that the proposed method can be on the structure [11]. When the mean wind speed v̄(z  )
used to identify wind load over the full height of the corresponding to a reference level z  and the time history of
structure accurately from the structural displacement or the fluctuating wind speed at all levels, v̂(z, t), are obtained,
strain responses. And only displacement or strain responses the wind load on the structure can be computed.
obtained in two orthogonal directions at a reference level are
required for an accurate identification.
3. Problem formulation
2. The wind load model in the time domain 3.1. The state space equation
The longitudinal wind load is considered in the following
The equation of motion of an n DOF damped structural
analysis neglecting the transverse and vertical wind load
system is expressed as
components. The wind speed at level z above the ground,
v(z, t), can be written as M Ẍ + C Ẋ + K X = P (5)
v(z, t) = v̄(z, t) + v̂(z, t) (1) where Mn×n , Cn×n and K n×n are the mass, damping and
where v̄(z, t) and v̂(z, t) denote the average wind speed and stiffness matrices. X, Ẋ and Ẍ are (n × 1) nodal displace-
fluctuating wind speed, respectively. The mean wind speed ments, velocities and accelerations vectors of the structure.
at a different level, v̄(z), may be calculated according to the Pn×1 is the wind load vector applied on the system.
power law [8] Eq. (5) can be rewritten in state space as

α
z Ż = K ∗ Z + B̂ P (6)
v̄(z) = v̄(z  )  (2)  
z X
where Z= ;
Ẋ 2·n×1
in which z  and v̄(z  ) are the reference height and average  
wind speed at the reference level, respectively. z and v̄(z) 0 I
K∗ = ;
are the arbitrary height and its corresponding average wind −M −1 K −M −1 C 2·n×2·n
speed. The power law exponent α is determined from the  
0
terrain roughness [8]. B̂ = . (7)
M −1 2·n×n
Since the wind speed is low, the aeroelastic forces arising
out of the interaction between air and the structure are If the response of the structure is represented by Ns
so small that they can be neglected. The aerodynamic output quantities in the output vector y(t) from sensors
forces due to wind turbulence are expressed as follows with such as accelerometers, velocity transducers, displacement
no lifting effect in the present case of vertical cantilever transducers or strain gauges, etc., the output equation can be
structure. The fluctuating wind load F(z, t) on the structure expressed as
at level z can be written as [9]
y = Ra Ẍ + Rv Ẋ + Rd X (8)
1
F(z, t) = ρµs (z)A(z)v 2 (z, t) (3) where Ra , Rv and Rd are output influence matrices
2
where ρ is the density of air, A(z) is the orthogonal exposed for the acceleration, velocity, displacement measurements,
wind area at level z and µs (z) is the drag coefficient of the respectively. Removing the term Ẍ from Eqs. (5) and (8)
structure at level z. yields
Substituting Eqs. (1) and (2) into (3) yields y = RZ + DP (9)
   
F(z, t) = Cm (z)v̄ (z ) + C f 1 (z)v̄(z )v̂(z, t)
2
where R = Rd − Ra M −1 K Rv − Ra M −1 C , D =
+ C f 2 (z)v̂ (z, t)
2
(4) Ra M −1 .
1588 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

Eqs. (6) and (9) are converted into discrete equations
using the exponential matrix, and the final discrete model
is
Z ( j + 1) = AZ ( j ) + B P
y( j ) = R Z ( j ) + D P ( j = 1, 2, . . . , N)
where N is the total number of sampling points. τ is the
time step between the state variables Z ( j + 1) and Z ( j ),
and A = exp(K ∗ τ ), B = K ∗ (A − I ) B̂.
Solving for the output y( j ) with zero initial conditions
from Eq. (10) in terms of the previous inputs P(i ) (i =
1, 2, . . . , j ) yields
j
y( j ) = Hi P( j − i )
i=0
where H0 = D and Hi = R A(i−1) B.
The constant matrices in the series in Eq. (11) are known
as system Markov parameters. The Markov parameters are
commonly used as the basis for identifying mathematical
models in linear dynamic systems. The Markov parameters
represent the response of the discrete system to unit impulse,
and they are properties of the structural system [12].
3.2. Wind load identification with regularization
We rewrite Eq. (11) to give the matrix convolution
equation as
H̄ P̃ = Y
in which
 
H0 0 ··· 0
 H1 H0 ··· 0 
 
H̄ =  .. .. ,
 . . ··· 0 
H N−1 H N−2 · · · H0
 T
P̃ = P(0)T , P(1)T , . . . , P(N − 1)T
 T
Y = y(0)T , y(1)T , . . . , y(N − 1)T .
This is an ill-posed problem due to the lack of continuous
dependence of the solution on the data. A straightforward
least-squares solution produces an unbounded result.
Regularization is usually used to circumvent the problem of
the lack of continuous dependence, and would provide an
analysis of the ill-posed problem. One approach is proposed
by Tikhonov [13]: replacing Eq. (12) with the associated
equation
 
H̄ T H̄ + λI P̃ = H̄ TY. (13)
Solving Eq. (13) is equivalent to solving the following
unique problem:
min J ( P̃, λ) =  H̄ P̃ − Y 2 + λV 2 . (14)
 
For λ > 0, the matrix operator H̄ T H̄ + λI is
mathematically unique, and its inverse is continuous in the
pseudo-inverse solution of Eq. (13). It is clear from the
second term that the non-negative regularization parameter
λ has the effect of forcing a bounded solution. The optimal
regularization parameter is determined by minimizing the
(10) identified error calculated by Eq. (16). In practice, the
real value is not known and an L-curve method [14] is
used to solve for the optimal regularization parameter.
If the measured displacements, velocities, strains and
accelerations (or their combinations) are used, each response
component in the vector y(t) in Eq. (8) should be scaled by
its respective norm to have dimensionless units.
4. Numerical simulation
(11)
A 50 m high guyed mast is studied as an example to
check the validity of the proposed wind load identification
method. White noise is added to the calculated responses of
the system to simulate the polluted measurements.
y = ycalculated + E P Noise σ (ycalculated) (15)
where y is the simulated measured response, ycalculated is the
calculated response, E P is the noise level, Noise is a standard
normal distribution vector with zero mean value and unit
standard deviation and σ (ycalculated) is the standard deviation
of the calculated response.
The relative percentage error in the identified wind load
can be calculated as
(12) Relative Percentage Error
P identified − P true 
= × 100% (16)
P true 
where  •  is the norm of the wind load vector. P identify
and P true are the identified and true wind load time histories,
respectively.
4.1. The 50 m high guyed mast
The 50 m high guyed mast has an equilateral triangular
cross-section with each side 1.2 m long. The three vertical
legs are of 219.1 mm diameter, 10 mm thick hollow steel
tubes for the lowest 5.8 m length and 6.35 mm thick for
the upper length of the legs. The diagonals and horizontal
members are 5 mm thick 60 mm steel tubes. The mast is
divided into 43 vertical segments with the first 40 segments
each 1.16 m high and the others 1.2 m high. It is tied to the
ground with cables at two levels of 20.88 and 46.40 m above
the ground level with three cables at each level as shown in
Fig. 1. The cables are of 17.5 mm diameter each, consisting
of 19 galvanized steel wires 3.55 mm in diameter, and the
initial tension in each cable is 23 520 N. The elastic mod-
ulus of the material is 2.05 × 1011 and 1.2 × 1011 N/m2
for the mast and cables, respectively. The mass density and
Poisson ratio for the mast are 7850 kg/m3 and 0.25 respec-
tively while those for the cables are 7820 kg/m3 and 0.20
respectively. Three 5 m × 4 m × 2.5 m deep reinforced
 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598
Fig. 1. Schematic view of the instrumented guyed mast.
concrete blocks are provided at a radial distance of 30 m
from the center of the mast serving as reaction anchors, and
they are located along lines radiated from the center of the
cross-section passing through one of the vertical legs. Cables
aligned in one vertical plane are anchored to one of the reac-
tion blocks. The mast is supported on a 4 m × 4 m × 2.1 m
deep reinforced concrete pedestal which is founded on firm
soil.
The coordinate system in the following analysis refers to
Fig. 1. The z-axis passes through the center of gravity of
the cross-section of the guyed mast, and the origin of the
coordinates is set at the ground level.
4.1.1. Equivalent model of the guyed mast
The guyed mast is modeled as an assembly of three-
dimensional beam–column elements that approximately
describe groups of similar panels of the mast. The initial
axial force and shear effect in the elements are considered.
The equivalent beam–column properties of the mast can
be derived by using the unit load method to determine the
displacements of its centroidal axis under separate axial
(Vz ), shear (Vx and Vy ), bending (Mx and M y ) and torsional
(Mz ) loads and equating them to those obtained from a
beam–column model analysis under the same forces. These
can be derived using an element end flexibility matrix
approach based on the principle of virtual work. The guys
are modeled as three-dimensional truss elements. Element
C1 S1 in Fig. 2 is modeled as a truss element with a rigid
arm [15] to represent the guys. Node S1 is an inner or slave
node and node M is the global or master node. S1 M is the
rigid arm.
4.1.2. The sag effect of the guys and the beam–column effect
of the mast
The equivalent elastic modulus E eq is adopted to include
the sag effect of guys. It is calculated from the formulation
1589
Fig. 2. Equivalent truss element with rigid arm.
by Ernst [16] as
E
E eq = (17)
w2 L 2 AE
1+ 12T 3
where E is the original elasticity modulus of the guys; L is
the cable length in the horizontal plane; w is the weight per
unit length; A is the cross-sectional area of the cable and T is
the initial tension force of the cable. The equivalent elastic
modulus calculated from the above formulation is the tan-
gent modulus. The geometry stiffness matrix [17] is included
in the finite element model to consider the beam–column ef-
fect from the axle force and moment acting on the element
induced by the initial tension force in the guys.
4.1.3. The reduced model of the structure
Guyan static reduction [18] is adopted to condense the
slave DOFs to the master DOFs of the guyed mast. All the
measured DOFs are designated as the master DOFs and are
denoted by X m (t). The remaining structural DOFs are called
the slave DOFs, and are denoted by X s (t). The equation of
motion of the reduced structural model is written as
Mr Ẍ m + Cr Ẋ m + K r X m = Pm (18)
where Mr , Cr and K r are the condensed mass, stiffness and
damping matrices corresponding to the master DOFs.
The structural system is discretized into six spatial truss
elements and ten spatial beam–column elements as shown in
1590 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

Table 1
Properties of the equivalent beam–columns

Equivalent stiffness Member location

0–5.8 m 5.8–46.4 m 46.4–50.0 m

Axial area—A (m2 ) 3.27 × 10−2 2.67 × 10−2 2.67 × 10−2

Second moment of area—Ixx (m4 ) 3.73 × 10−3 2.06 × 10−3 2.00 × 10−3
Second moment of area—I yy (m4 ) 3.73 × 10−3 2.06 × 10−3 2.00 × 10−3
Torsional moment of area—J (m4 ) 2.67 × 10−4 2.61 × 10−4 2.57 × 10−4
Shear area—A xx (m2 ) 1.17 × 10−3 1.17 × 10−3 1.15 × 10−3
Shear area—A yy (m2 ) 1.17 × 10−3 1.17 × 10−3 1.15 × 10−3

Table 2
The first eight natural frequencies of the guyed mast

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Original
model (Hz) 1.053 1.844 2.324 3.130 5.455 5.678 9.879 9.958 15.425 15.525
Reduced
model (Hz) 1.053 1.845 2.324 3.131 5.456 5.679 9.885 9.964 15.464 15.565
Error (%) −0.00 −0.08 −0.00 −0.03 −0.02 −0.02 −0.06 −0.06 −0.25 −0.26
Note: Error(%) = ( f original − f reduced )/ f original ∗ 100%.

Fig. 1. The equivalent properties of the spatial beam–column
elements [19] for a segment of the mast with an equilateral
triangular cross-section are listed in Table 1 [20]. In the
following studies, the DOFs correspond to the x- and y-
directions of all the mast nodes are taken as the master
DOFs. Rayleigh damping is assumed and the first two
damping ratios are taken equal to 0.02. Table 2 gives the
first ten natural frequencies of the system before and after
reduction. The relative percentage errors of the eigenvalues
are very small, and the error increases with the order number
with the largest error equal to 0.26%. It may be concluded
that the Guyan static reduction technique is accurate enough
for analyzing the lower eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the
system as well as the time response history under wind load.
shown in the Appendix A. For the procedure for calculating
the varying wind load time histories, refer to Appendix A.
Fig. 3 shows the simulated fluctuating wind speed time
histories at Nodes 1, 4, 7 and 10 for a 10 min interval.
A comparison of the power spectral density of these wind
speeds with those obtained from the Kaimal spectrum
is plotted in Fig. 4. The power spectral density of the
simulated fluctuating wind speed agrees well with the
Kaimal spectrum [21] which is based on the mean wind
speed. The variations in the spectrum are contributions from
the fluctuating wind components.
4.3. Identified results and discussion

4.2. Simulation of the fluctuating wind load
The highest frequency of interest of the fluctuating wind
component is taken as 2.5 Hz and the size of fast Fourier
transform is 2048. The time step of data is 0.2 s. The
roughness length z 0 is taken as 0.02 m, and the exponential
decay coefficient C z is taken as 8.0 [9] for calculating the
wind power spectrum; for the coherence function between
the wind speeds at two different levels, refer to Appendix A.
The vertical wind profile is assumed to follow the power law
with an exponent α of 0.16. For convenience of computation,
the reference height is assumed as 50 m, which is at the
top of the structure. The mean wind speed is 30 m/s at this
reference level, and the angle β between the wind direction
and the positive direction of the x-axis is assumed to be
30 degrees. The density of air ρ is taken as 1.23 kg/m3
in the wind load calculation. The fluctuating wind speed is
simulated as an ergodic multivariate stochastic process as
The orthogonal exposed wind area at a level is calcu-
lated [17] with µs (z) = 1.6, and the wind load is assumed
to be concentrated forces applied at the nodes at different
levels. The responses of the system are calculated using a
time increment of 0.02 s, and the wind data is interpolated
to have the same time increment, namely, with a sampling
frequency of 50 Hz. The non-linearity of the system under
the wind load has been checked to be very small, justifying
the use of Newmark method in the response analysis [20].
As a matter of fact, the responses of the system in
the field measurement cannot be obtained with zero initial
conditions because the wind is continuous. The velocity
and acceleration responses of the structure cannot reveal the
effect caused by the mean wind speed components with non-
zero initial conditions; therefore the wind load identification
shown below is performed on the basis of measured
displacement responses with non-zero initial conditions. The
“measured” displacement responses are calculated from the
 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598 1591

Fig. 3. Simulated fluctuating wind speed.

Fig. 4. Comparison of power spectral density between simulated and Kaimal spectra (— Kaimal, – – – simulated).
1592 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

Table 3
Error of identification from different sets of measured responses (Eq. (12))

Node No. Wind load Displacement responses from different sets of nodes
1–10 1–5 6–10 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 10

Fx 3.70 5.23 87.80 15.06 53.65 101.12

1
Fy 3.73 5.26 95.97 14.78 53.63 99.76

Fx 3.02 4.23 61.02 20.03 15.36 102.13

2
Fy 3.07 4.24 56.54 19.73 15.39 97.64

Fx 3.72 8.28 34.24 9.30 24.08 100.93

3
Fy 3.85 6.71 28.49 8.97 24.03 93.42

Fx 4.08 41.33 21.11 23.30 10.18 96.40

4*
Fy 4.29 26.70 17.45 22.29 10.25 97.40
Fx 3.43 22.68 27.11 5.65 6.42 86.65
5
Fy 3.74 17.01 26.75 5.52 6.45 82.96

Fx 3.11 37.79 33.83 13.35 10.43 72.67

6
Fy 3.43 25.86 30.43 13.01 10.25 76.91

Fx 3.30 36.69 26.71 19.90 17.79 52.65

7
Fy 3.58 26.85 24.60 20.08 17.66 56.16

Fx 3.40 24.09 4.47 19.43 4.23 44.60

8
Fy 3.57 21.92 4.39 19.27 4.24 44.81

Fx 2.72 47.23 3.42 19.79 15.95 14.25

9*
Fy 2.87 31.81 3.24 19.74 15.15 11.18

Fx 3.74 39.88 3.99 30.99 14.47 86.35

10
Fy 3.80 33.89 3.98 30.90 13.97 85.03

(1) ∗ refers to nodes at the guy levels. (2) Fx and Fy are wind load components in x- and y-directions, respectively.

structure under the wind load excitation specific to the z can be approximately formulated with respect to the wind
simulation. load at the reference level. The system force vector Pn×1 is
defined as the following in the inverse problem:
4.3.1. Identified wind load from structural displacements  T    
The noise-free displacement response components in P = C̄1 C̄2 · · · C̄ j · · · C̄n P z  , t = C̄ P z  , t (19)
both the x- and y-directions at each nodal level are used to  T
identify the wind load. Six sets of measured displacement in which C̄ = C̄1 C̄2 · · · C̄ j · · · C̄n is the force
responses are used as shown in Table 3, with responses coefficient vector. P(z , t) = 2 ρµs (z )A(z )v (z  , t) is the
 1   2

ranging from a single node to all the nodes above ground. wind load at the reference level z  calculated from Eq. (3).
 2α
Table 3 gives the Relative Percentage Error (RPE) of the A z
C̄ j = A j z j ( j = 1, 2, . . . , n), A j and z j are the
z
identified results and Fig. 5 shows the identified wind load
exposed wind areas and height at the j -th node; A z  is the
components at Nodes 1, 5 and 10 obtained from the
exposed wind area at the reference level.
displacements of all nodes.
If the wind attack angle β (angle between the
It is noted from Table 3 and Fig. 5 that accurate nodal
positive direction of the x-axis and the wind direction)
wind loads can be identified when all the nodal displacement
is not zero, the force vector may be written as P =
responses are included in the identification, while other    
C̄x1 0 · · · C̄x j 0 · · · C̄xn 0 T Px (z  , t) 
sets of responses with incomplete measurement give 0 C̄ y1 · · · 0 C̄ y j · · · 
Py (z , t)
= C̄ P, with
   0 C̄ yn
unacceptable results at most of the nodal points. This may be 
P = PPxy (z , t)
(z  , t)
; C̄ x j and C̄ y j are the force coefficients along
due to the solution of the underdetermined set of equations
in Eq. (12). In practice, measuring all nodal displacements the x- and y-directions. Px (z  , t) = P(z  , t) × cos β and
is impossible or very costly. And the following alternative Py (z  , t) = P(z  , t) × sin β are wind load components in the
approach is proposed to overcome this problem. x- and y-directions, respectively, at the reference level.
Eq. (12) may be rewritten as
4.3.2. Approximate formulation for wind load identification H̄c P̃c = Y (20)
We assume that the wind speed (including the fluctuating
components) along the vertical direction of the structure with the wind load and wind attack angle at the reference
follows the power law, and the wind load at a certain level level as the unknowns, in which
 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598 1593

Fig. 5. Identified results from all nodal displacements (— true wind loads, . . . . . identified results).

 
H0C̄ 0 ··· 0 It is interesting to note that the identified wind load data
 H1C̄ H0C̄ ··· 0  is less than the true values over the whole time history.
 
H̄c =  .. .. , The accuracy becomes better when the measured station
 . . ··· 0 
is closer to the reference level with the displacements at
H N−1 C̄ H N−2 C̄ · · · H0C̄
 T Node 10 giving the better results. When the number of
 
P̃c = P(0)T , P(1)T , . . . , P(N − 1)T measurement stations increases, the identified results do not
 T become better; on the contrary, they become slightly worse.
Y = y(0)T , y(1)T , . . . , y(N − 1)T . This may be due to the assumption of the same fluctuating
wind speed at different levels above ground. This is contrast
At another level z above the ground, the wind load is to the real case where the vertical correlation between two
1 measured fluctuating wind velocities is governed by the
P(z, t) = ρµs (z)A(z)v 2 (z, t) (21) coherence function in Eq. (A.11) in Appendix A, while the
2
 α horizontal correlation is too small to neglect. Subsequently,
where v(z, t) = v̄(z  ) zz + v̂(z, t), v̄(z  ) is the mean the following iterative approach is further developed to
wind speed calculated from the identified wind load at the improve the identified results.
reference level, and v̂(z, t) is the simulated fluctuating wind
speed corresponding to a level z [21]. It is noted that the 4.3.3. Modified iterations for an improved identification
power law exponent α is a function of the terrain roughness Eq. (19) assumes a power law distribution of the wind
and is independent of the wind speed. It is known before the speed based on the wind speed at the reference level. In fact,
wind load identification. The wind attack angle β is known there is difference in the fluctuating wind speeds at different
when both the x- and y-components of the wind load are levels, even though they have the same power spectral
identified. density. This difference may induce a large identified
The same simulated sets of responses as for last study error. The iterative approach is therefore modified as
are used. The identified results from eight noise-free follows:
displacement sets are tabulated in Table 4 and Fig. 6 shows Step 1: Identify the wind load at the reference level from
the identified results from displacements at Node 10 or 8. the measured responses from Eq. (20). The wind speed
1594 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

Table 4
Error of identification from different sets of measured responses (Eq. (20))
Node No. Wind load Displacement responses from different sets of nodes
10 8 6 4 2 9, 10 8–10 5–10
Fx 7.84 11.40 18.20 22.79 31.33 8.41 9.36 10.96
1
Fy 9.02 11.14 16.99 20.63 27.30 9.31 9.81 10.74
Fx 7.75 11.29 18.05 22.61 31.09 8.32 9.26 10.85
2
Fy 8.92 11.02 16.85 20.47 27.08 9.21 9.71 10.63
Fx 7.76 11.29 18.06 22.62 31.09 8.33 9.27 10.86
3
Fy 8.92 11.03 16.86 20.47 27.09 9.21 9.71 10.63
Fx 7.77 11.31 18.08 22.65 31.13 8.34 9.28 10.88
4*
Fy 8.94 11.05 16.88 20.50 27.12 9.23 9.73 10.65
Fx 7.80 11.34 18.12 22.70 31.19 8.37 9.31 10.91
5
Fy 8.97 11.08 16.92 20.54 27.18 9.26 9.76 10.68
Fx 7.89 11.47 18.21 22.88 31.44 8.47 9.42 11.03
6
Fy 9.07 11.20 17.06 20.71 27.40 9.38 9.44 10.80
Fx 7.91 11.49 18.30 22.92 31.48 8.51 9.89 11.05
7
Fy 9.09 11.22 17.09 20.75 27.44 9.33 9.37 10.82
Fx 7.85 11.41 18.28 22.80 31.33 8.42 9.82 10.97
8
Fy 9.02 11.14 17.00 20.64 27.30 9.32 9.46 10.75
Fx 7.93 11.51 18.34 22.96 31.53 8.48 9.72 11.07
9*
Fy 9.11 11.24 17.12 20.78 27.48 9.40 9.91 10.85
Fx 7.86 11.43 18.23 22.82 31.35 8.43 9.38 10.99
10
Fy 9.03 11.16 17.01 20.66 27.32 9.33 9.83 10.76

Note: (1) ∗ refers to nodes at the guy levels. (2) Fx and Fy are wind load components in x- and y-directions, respectively.

Fig. 6. Identified results from noise-free displacements at Node 8 or 10 (— true wind loads, – – – Node 10, . . . . . Node 8).
 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598 1595

Fig. 7. Identified results from noise-free displacements at Node 10 (— true wind loads, – – – with modified iterations, . . . . . without modified iterations).

at the reference level, including the mean wind speed and
the fluctuating wind speed, is calculated from Eq. (3). The
identified wind speed is then averaged.
Step 2: Simulate the fluctuating wind speed v̂(z, t) [11]
corresponding to a different level z on the basis of the
identified mean wind speed from Step 1 and the power
law.
Step 3: Calculate the total wind load from Eq. (4) with
the identified mean wind speed from Step 1 and simulated
fluctuating wind speed data from Step 2. This is to include
the second order term of the fluctuating wind speed for better
accuracy. Then obtain the responses at the measured DOFs
by solving the equation of motion of the system using the
Newmark method.
Step 4: Identify the wind load increment P(z  , t) from
Eq. (20) on the basis of the difference between the measured
responses and responses calculated from using the identified
wind loads.
Step 5: On the basis of the newly identified wind load,
P j (z  , t) = P j −1 (z  , t) + P j (z  , t), obtain the new wind
speed data v j (z  , t) from Eq. (3). Repeat Steps 2 to 5 until
the following conditions are satisfied:
 
  P̄ (z  ) 
 j  load components from responses with 1% and 10% noise
  ≤ Tolerance1 and (1 − cc ) ≤ Tolerance2
 P̄ j (z  ) 
where  P̄ j (z  ) and P̄ j (z  ) are the mean values of the time
histories P j (z  , t) and P j (z  , t), respectively, and cc are
the coefficients of correlation between the identified wind
loads at the reference level in two successive iterations,
P j (z  , t) and P j −1 (z  , t). The convergence criteria Tolerance1
and Tolerance2 are selected as 10−3 in this study. The last
P j (z  , t) after convergence can be taken as the wind load at
the reference level. And for other level, z above the ground,
the wind loads can be computed from Eq. (21) with the last
v̂(z, t) obtained after convergence as the latest simulated
fluctuating wind speed.
The identified results from displacements at Node 10
with and without using the modified iterations are plotted
in Fig. 7. It can be seen clearly that the new scheme of
iterations can improve the identified results. The modified
results match the true time history very well except at one or
two peaks.
4.3.4. Effect of measurement noise
Displacement responses at Node 10 with different noise
levels are used to identify the wind load, and the modified
iteration steps are employed. The identified results are
tabulated in Table 5, and Fig. 8 shows the identified wind
levels.
1596 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

Table 5 Acknowledgements
Error of identification from different sets of measured responses (Eq. (20)
with the modified iteration procedure) The work described in this paper was supported by a grant
Node No. Wind load Noise level (%) from the Hong Kong Research Grant Council Project No.
0 1 5 10 PolyU 5043/02E. Acknowledgement is made to the High-
Fx 4.77 7.74 9.94 14.97 ways Department of the Hong Kong Special Administrative
1 Region Government for its permission to make use of the
Fy 3.52 6.49 8.79 14.06
guyed mast for the present research and this publication.
Fx 4.65 7.62 9.82 14.85
2
Fy 3.41 6.38 8.68 13.95

Fx 4.66 7.62 9.82 14.85

3
Fy 3.41 6.39 8.68 13.95 Appendix A
Fx 4.68 7.65 9.84 14.88
4*
Fy 3.43 6.41 8.70 13.97 A.1. Simulation of fluctuating wind speed [11]
Fx 4.71 7.68 9.87 14.91
5
Fy 3.46 6.44 8.73 14.00 Neglecting the correlation of the fluctuating wind in the
Fx 4.84 7.80 9.02 15.04
x-, y- and z-directions in time, the fluctuating wind is taken
6 as a stationary single dimensional (separately in x-, y- and
Fy 3.57 6.55 8.85 14.12
z-directions) and multivariable stochastic process with zero
Fx 4.86 7.83 9.94 15.06
7
Fy 3.60 6.57 8.87 14.15
mean value, as a function of time.
For a stationary single dimensional and multivariable
Fx 4.78 7.75 9.95 14.98 stochastic process, the cross-spectral density matrix can be
8
Fy 3.52 6.50 8.79 14.07
expressed as
Fx 4.89 7.85 8.96 15.09  
9*
Fy 3.62 6.60 8.89 14.17 S11 (ω) S12 (ω) · · · S1n (ω)
 S21 (ω) S22 (ω) · · · S2n (ω)
 
Fx 4.79 7.76 9.75 14.99 S(ω) =  . .. ..  (A.1)
10
Fy 3.54 7.51 8.81 14.08  .. . ··· . 
Note: (1) * refers to nodes at the guy levels. (2) Fx and Fy are wind load Sn1 (ω) Sn2 (ω) · · · Snn (ω)
components in x- and y-directions, respectively.
and S(ω) can be decomposed by the Choleskey method as
follows:
∗
The error of identification is found to increase with the S(ω) = H (ω)H T (ω) (A.2)
noise level, but it is not very sensitive to the noise. The T∗
H (ω) is a lower triangle matrix, and H (ω) is its
noise is in the form of high frequency components in the
congruent transpose:
responses which further induces high frequency components
 
in the identified wind load in the inverse problem as shown H11(ω) 0 ··· 0
in Fig. 8. A low pass filter may be used to smooth the  H21(ω) H22(ω) · · · 0 
 
measured responses before identification in practice, and the H (ω) =  . .. .. . (A.3)
 .. . ··· . 
final identified results would match the true time histories
very accurately. Hn1 (ω) Hn2(ω) · · · Hnn (ω)
The diagonal components of the above matrix are real
valued quantities, while the off-diagonal terms are complex,
5. Conclusions and they have the relationships
H j j (ω) = H j j (−ω), j = 1, 2, . . . , n;
 
A practical method has been developed for identifying  ∗  iθ(ω)
H j m (ω) = H j m (ω) e j m , j = 1, 2, . . . , n;
the longitudinal time-varying wind load acting on a structure
from measured structural displacement responses. For the m = 1, 2, . . . , j − 1;


−1 Im[H j m (ω)]
simulation studies with the 50 m guyed mast structure, the
approximate method enables such identification from as few θ j m (ω) = tan
Re[H j m (ω)]
as two measurements from two orthogonal directions at
a reference level of the structure. The proposed modified where ω is the frequency in rad/s. Then the fluctuating wind
iteration procedure further improves the identified results, speed may be simulated as
which are not sensitive to the measurement noise which √
j
N  
is in the higher end of the frequency spectrum, while the v̂ j (t) = 2 ω  H j m (ωml )
fluctuating wind load components are in the lower end of m l
the spectrum. × cos[ωml t − θ j m (ωml ) + φml ] (A.4)
 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598 1597

Fig. 8. Identified results from displacements at Node 10 with 1% and 10% noise (— true wind loads, – – – 1% noise, . . . . . 10% noise).

in which ω = ωu /N, N is the number used to divide the B jm

  

frequency equally, ωu is the upper truncated frequency, φml   

 2 (ω)  H j m (l − 1) ω + mω 
is the random phase uniformly distributed between 0 and 
  n 

   
2π, ωml is the double index frequency, and ωml is defined × exp −iθ l − 1ω + n mω
=
as 


 × exp(iφml ) 1≤l ≤ N


m 
ωml = (l − 1)ω + ω (A.5) 0 N + 1 ≤ l ≤ M.
N
(A.8)
and in the simulation, the time step should satisfy the re-
quirement of t ≤ 2π/2ωu and the period of the simulated If we rewrite Eq. (A.7) as
fluctuating wind speed is defined as T0 = 2nπ/ω.

(q)

M
2πi(l − 1)(q − 1)
In order to save computer time, fast Fourier transfor- G jm = B (l)
jm exp (A.9)
mation (FFT) is adopted to simulate the fluctuating wind l=1
M
speed, and Eq. (8) should be modified to the following
(q)
form: where G j m = G j m (qt) and B (l)
j m = B j m (lω), it is clear
(q) (l)
v̂ j ( pt) that G j m is the discrete FFT of B j m . Using the discrete FFT
 
  technique can result in substantial computational savings.

j
mω
= Re G j m (qt) exp i pt (A.6)
m=1
n
A.2. Cross-spectral density
where p = 1, 2, . . . , M × n; q = 1, 2, . . . , M; j =
1, 2, . . . , n; M ≥ 2N, t = 2π/(Mω) and G j m (qt)
is defined as follow: From the previous section, we know that the cross-
spectral density is essential for the simulation of the
G j m (qt) fluctuating wind speed. The components of the double sided

M cross-spectral density matrix can be calculated as
= B j m (lω) exp(i((l − 1)ω)((q − 1)t)) (A.7)
l=1 S j k (ω) = S j j (ω)Skk (ω)γ j k (z, ω)
and j = 1, 2, . . . , n; k = 1, 2, . . . , n (A.10)
1598 S.S. Law et al. / Engineering Structures 27 (2005) 1586–1598

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