In this paper, we select the application domain of earthquake engineering for utility of sonification, where signals are of random frequency and amplitude content. In particular, we focus on the response of structures to particular earthquake time histories. Given a random ground motion input, the resulting response signal will vary in the time and frequency domain, and show large variations in acceleration, velocity and displacement space. We illustrate the utility of different simple, yet robust sonification techniques to the study of the response of a variety of linear elastic single-degree-offreedom (SDOF) oscillators, with different natural periods Tn and associated damping ratios n, subjected to a pair of earthquake motions. In the system study, we augment the representation of the response results of these SDOF structures with both visual and aural cues.
Lakshmy Ramaswamy, Tara C. Hutchinson, Falko Kuest