Damage Assessment of a Full-Scale Six-Story wood-frame Building Following Triaxial shake Table Tests

Abstract

In the summer of 2009, a full-scale midrise wood-frame building was tested under a series of simulated earthquakes on the world's largest shake table in Miki City, Japan. The objective of this series of tests was to validate a performance-based seismic design approach by qualitatively and quantitatively examining the building's seismic performance in terms of response kinematics and observed damage. This paper presents the results of detailed damage inspections following each test in a series offive shake table tests, and explains their qualitative synthesis to provide design method validation. The seismic test program had nvo phases. Phase I was the testing of a seven-story mixed-use building with the frst story consisting of a steel special moment frame (SMF) and stories 2-7 made of light-frame wood. In phase II, the SMF was heavily braced such that it effectively became an extension of the shake table and testing was conducted on only stories 2-7, making the building a six-story light-frame multifamily residential building instead of a mixed-use building. All earthquake motions were scalings of rhe 1994 Northridge earthquake at the Canoga Park recording station with seismic intensitie s ranging from peak ground accelerations of 0.22 to 0.88 g. The building performed quite well during all earthquakes with damage only to the gypsum wall board (drywall), no sill plate splitting, no nails withdrawing or pulling through the sheathing, no edge tearing of the sheathing, no visible stud splitting around tie-down rods, and reasonable floor accelerations. On the basis of damage inspection, it was conchrdcd that it is possible to design this type ofbuilding and keep the damage to a manageable level cluring major earthquakes by utilizing the new design approach.

Citation

van de Lindt, John W.; Gupta, Rakesh; Pei, Shiling; Tachibana, Kazuki; Araki, Yasuhiro; Rammer, Douglas; Isoda, Hiroshi. 2012. Damage assessment of a full-scale six-story wood-frame building following triaxial shake table tests. Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities 26(1): 17-23.