System identification and reliability assessment of an industrial chimney under wind loading

This study presents the reliability assessment of a 100.5 m tall reinforced concrete chimney at a glass factory under wind loading by using vibration-based identified modal values. Ambient vibration measurements were recorded and modal values such as frequencies, shapes and damping ratios were identified by using Enhanced Frequency Domain Decomposition (EFDD) method. Afterwards, Finite Element Model (FEM) of the chimney was verified based on identified modal parameters. Reliability assessment of the chimney under wind loading was performed by obtaining the exceedance probability of demand to capacity distribution. Demand distribution of the chimney was developed under repetitive seeds of multivariate stochastic wind fields generated along the height of chimney. Capacity distribution of the chimney was developed by Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, it was found that reliability of the chimney is lower than code suggested limit values.