Neural Networks and Principal Component Analysis for Identification of Building Natural Periods

This paper deals with an application of neural networks for computation of fundamental natural periods of buildings with load-bearing walls. The analysis is based on long-term tests performed on actual structures. The identification problem is formulated as the relation between structural and soil basement parameters, and the fundamental period of building. The principal component analysis for compression of input data is also used. Backpropagation neural networks are applied in the analysis. Results of neural network identification of natural periods are compared with data from experiments. The application of the proposed neural networks enables us to identify the natural periods of the buildings with quite satisfactory accuracy for engineering practice. The compression of the input data to principal components by principal component analysis makes it possible to design much smaller neural networks than those without data compression with no greater increase of the neural approximation errors. It appears that this technique would also be very useful in damage detection and health monitoring of structures.