City University of Hong Kong

Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering

CA4157: Computer Application in Structural Engineering

Assignment 1 (Due on 11th October, 2016)

Question 1
A platform of weight W = 100 kN is being supported by 4 equal columns which are fixed to the
foundation as well as to the platform. Experimentally it has been determined that a static force of F
= 10 kN applied horizontally to the platform produces a displacement of = 1 mm. It is estimated
that damping in the structure is of the order of 5% of the critical damping. Determine the following
quantities for this structure: (a) undamped natural frequency, (b) damping coefficient, (c) damped
frequency, and (d) the number of cycles and the time required for the amplitude of motion to be
reduced from an initial value of 1 mm to 0.1 mm.

Question 2
For the four-story shear building shown in Figure 1, determine (a) the stiffness and mass matrices;
and (b) the normalized mode shapes and verify the orthogonal conditions between modes. All
columns are made of the section with I = 3.7 10 5 m 4 and the mass per unit length for both floors
are the same and are equal to 2.7 kg/m. The modulus of elasticity is E = 2.0 1011 N m 2 .

2.4 m

3.6 m

5m

6m

Fig. 1

Structural Dynamics

Question 3
(a) Determine the first three terms of the Fourier series expansion for the time-varying force shown
in Fig. 2(a);
(b) Determine the steady-state response for the damped spring mass system shown in Fig. 2(b) that
is acted upon by the forcing function in (a). Given m = 50 kg, k = 20 kN/m and = 0.05 (damping
ratio).

l0

k
m

f (t )

cv
(a)

(b)
Figure 2

Structural Dynamics