Use of operational modal analysis to confirm the finite element model of a reconstructed historic timber building in Istanbul

Timber is one of the most commonly utilised materials in traditional buildings. For the design and seismic assessment of them, the construction of a well-working numerical model is a challenging task. Hence, this study is organised as a validation study to visualise the real dynamic properties of traditional timber buildings constructed in T & uuml;rkiye with numerical models. A three-story historic timber building, reconstructed Istanbul, has been used as a reference structure. The reconstruction gave the chance of identifying all structural details in the buildings. Thereby, its detailed numerical model was constructed with the finite element method. The lack of suitable connection models for the observed building necessitated research into connection modelling. Hence, the real dynamc properties of the building were determined by operational modal analysis and used as control parameters to be caught by the Eigenvalue analysis performed on two models, i.e. one with fixed and another with released connections. The study demonstrated that the numerical model incorporating released connections more accurately captured the real dynamic behaviour of the building compared to the model with fixed connections. Furthermore, the models with semi-rigid connections cannot yield superior results. Consequently, released connections are recommended for numerical models of similar timber structures.