Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) is one of the latest engineered wood products to show promising structural features for a variety of structural purposes including resisting lateral loads. For CLT to be widely adopted, its modal behavior needs to be fully evaluated through experimental and numerical methods. It is important to the continued expansion of CLT use, to further understand the influence of environmental factors, and non-structural elements on the dynamic behavior of CLT buildings. It is in this context that this dissertation sets out to contribute to the understanding of CLT’s dynamic parameters using a multi-scale approach. This dissertation focuses on the dynamic identification of CLT at three scales, namely: (1) the building scale, (2) the structural system scale, and (3) the structural element scale. The building scale’s system identification and finite element results help illustrate the impact of non-structural components to the dynamic behavior of a CLT building under service level conditions. Results on the system scale experiment illustrate effects of applied ground motions and system retrofitting based on observed damage. The system identification methods performed on the CLT element illustrate that the floor element stiffness was not permanently affected by weathering cycles. This was confirmed by static bending tests, which suggested that damage due to moisture cycling impacted only the bending strength of the tested panels, although more moisture cycling tests should be conducted to establish the statistical significance of these results. As the use of CLT continue to grow, further work is needed (1) to quantify changes in modal parameters of CLT buildings under higher levels of excitations than ambient vibrations, (2) to better understand the effect that wall-to-diaphragm connections have on higher modes of vibrations, (3) to develop system identification methods to assess moisture related alterations of CLT mechanical properties.
