Experimental investigation and numerical modeling of rocking cross laminated timber walls on a flexible foundation

Abstract

AbstractWith recent developments of engineered wood products such as cross laminated timber, mass timber buildings in areas of high seismicity are becoming feasible and offer benefits such as faster construction and unique architectural features. It has also opened the door to creating seismically resilient lateral systems that sustain minor and reparable damage during large earthquakes. This paper presents a numerical modeling procedure for mass timber rocking wall lateral system with distributed spring elements to model base rocking. This modeling technique was validated by comparing the behavior with results from the full‐scale two‐story shake table test on a mass timber building with coupled CLT rocking walls completed as part of the NHERI TallWood Project. Although the lateral system performed better than expected during testing, it was determined that the flexibility of the foundation actually limited damage to the rocking wall panels. By adjusting the numerical model to represent a rigid foundation boundary condition, it was determined that the wall system would have experienced more damage, but would have still met design performance objectives had it been tested on a rigid foundation.