The response of a 17-story reinforced concrete building is analyzed considering the seismic events recorded between 1990 and 2022. Located in a soft soil zone in Mexico City, this building is one of many structures damaged during the 1985 earthquake (Mw 8.1). The irregular building consists of a mezzanine, five levels for parking, and an eccentrical tower with 12 office stories. Due to the 1985 earthquakes, the structure suffered structural damage between the parking levels and the tower. It was repaired in 1989 by replacing the masonry walls with reinforced concrete walls throughout its height. Since 1990, thirteen accelerometers have been operating in the building at the soil, base, intermediate, and roof levels. Over 32 years, fifteen low, twelve moderate, and one severe seismic event were recorded and analyzed before the recording systems reported failures in 2022. A monitoring methodology implemented as a structural warning system automatically processes seismic records to establish the building’s structural condition by weighting two seismic severity and three structural performance indicators. The records are analyzed using a simplified model and identification techniques based on modal minimization and recursive subspace estimation methods. This paper discusses the performance of the structural health monitoring system implemented in 2009 (Aldama, 2009). The results indicate that the system has operated effectively, suggesting a Yellow state in the building’s structural condition with intermediate damage during the September 19, 2017, earthquake, when the maximum acceleration and displacement responses were recorded. In this event, seismic severity and structural performance indicators reached their highest values.
García-Illescas et al. (Tue,) studied this question.