Hybride Bell Tower Like Structures in Earthquake Environment

Dynamic actions of bell movement are characteristic aspects in bell towers and thus show significant influences on the response of the main structure. In case of strong motions the oscillation of the bell exhibits(moderately) large rotations and nonlinear analysis becomes essential to understand the nature of the system and its dynamic process. The bell is modeled as rigid pendulum and the equations of motion of the hybrid structure follow from the formulation according to Lagrange equations. A coupled 2DOF system is used to study the dominant geometrically nonlinear influence of the bells rotation in frequency domain. Numerical nonlinear computer simulations are performed for MDOFs studying the influence of the higher modes of the main structure on the behavior of the pendulum. Parameter studies are performed for two different types of support excitations, i.e., time-harmonic, stationary random process