Lateral behavior of panelized CLT walls: A pushover analysis based on minimal resistance assumption

Abstract

A new simplified mechanistic model was developed in this study to predict the rocking and sliding lateral response of a CLT panel wall under monotonic pushover with different boundary and gravity loading conditions based on an approximation of the principle of virtual work. Namely, for a given forced lateral displacement increment, the CLT wall will engage in a combination of rocking and sliding motion that will minimize the total work needed to go through that displacement increment. The proposed model was compared to the existing test results to illustrate its ability to capture the two types of wall behavior. Being a simplified mechanistic model, a number of material nonlinear characteristics such as the local crush of wood and the biaxial interaction of the connectors were not captured, resulting in a backbone characterization accuracy not as good as some existing well-calibrated models. However, the contribution of the study is to provide a mechanistic approach to address the switching between rocking and sliding behavior of CLT panelized walls under different boundary conditions. Using the model, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to investigate the effect of wall configurations and boundary conditions on the behavior of CLT shear walls.