Systematic Seismic Design for Manageable Loss in Wood-Framed Buildings

Abstract

Light frame wood structures make up the vast majority of the residential building stock in the United States. Because of this, earthquake-induced losses for this category of building from a significant earthquake would have a substantial financial impact on the regional economy, as well as on the building owner. Current wood-framed structural design philosophy focuses only on life safety and only limits damage through implicit assumptions. The concept of loss-based seismic design is introduced in this paper with typical loss-based design statements explicitly formulated with the intent of addressing the concerns, e.g., financial loss, of the building end-user. The loss-based design procedure was established based on a loss estimation framework that relied on the existing concept of assembly-based vulnerability (ABV). With the help of an automated dynamic and loss analysis package developed for wood-framed structures (SAPWood™) at Colorado State University, loss-based seismic design for a typical North American single family residential building was conducted for several different explicitly stated loss targets. The results from the numerical examples showed that loss-based seismic design for wood-framed structures is a viable concept that can serve as an important step in the evolution of end-user oriented, performance-based seismic design (PBSD).