Natural Vibrations - 1

Introduction

  • Earthquakes can cause buildings to vibrate.

  • Every building has a number of ways, or modes, in which it can vibrate naturally. In each mode, the building vibrates to and fro with a particular distorted shape called its mode shape.

  • The number of times it vibrates to and fro every second is the frequency of vibration for that mode.

  • Every building has its own set of natural frequencies of vibration.

Earthquakes usually make buildings vibrate most strongly in their fundamental mode, the mode of vibration with the lowest frequency.

Find out more about modes of vibrations on these pages:

2 - Fundamental Modes of Vibration.
3 - Higher Modes of Vibration.
4 - The Natural Frequency of a Building

Do some of the IDEERS Natural Frequency Experiments.

 

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Vibrating Buildings
       Natural Vibration - 1

from Bristol University