FINITE ELEMENT MODELLING AND OMA OF THE "LABORAL CITY OF CULTURE" TOWER

The building of the Laboral City of Culture is located in the city of Gijon (Spain) and it was built in the 1950s. The tower of this building is reminiscent of the famous Giralda tower in Seville and the Lighthouse in Alexandria. The tower has a height of 130 m and a square shape 12 x 12 m. In order to have data about the dynamic behaviour of the tower at a present state, operational modal analysis (OMA) was applied in order to identify its modal parameters (natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping ratios). However, due to the difficulty of measuring the response of steel cross 25 meters height located at the top of the structure, the modal identification is quite an intricate task. With the aim of improving the understanding of the dynamic behaviour of the tower, a detailed 3D finite element model (FEM) was assembled in ABAQUS. The correlation between the experimental and the numerical modal parameters are presented in this paper and it is concluded that the FEM model leads to a satisfactory identification of all the mode shapes of the structure.