Project contact is Daniel Dowden at Michigan Technological University (United States)
Summary
This award will investigate a low-damage solution for cross-laminated timber (CLT) seismic force-resisting systems (SFRSs) using a novel uplift friction damper (UFD) device for seismically resilient mass-timber buildings. The UFD device will embrace the natural rocking wall behavior that is expected in tall CLT buildings, provide stable energy dissipation, and exhibit self-centering characteristics. Structural repair of buildings with these devices is expected to be minimal after a design level earthquake. Although CLT has emerged as a construction material that has revitalized the timber industry, there exists a lack of CLT-specific seismic energy dissipation devices that can integrate holistically with the natural kinematics of CLT-based SFRSs. CLT wall panels themselves do not provide any measurable seismic energy dissipation. As a payload to the large-scale, ten-story CLT building specimen to be tested on the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) shake table at the University of California, San Diego, as part of NSF award 1636164, “Collaborative Research: A Resilience-based Seismic Design Methodology for Tall Wood Buildings,” this project will conduct a series of tests with the UFD devices installed on the CLT building specimen. These tests will bridge analytical and numerical models with the high fidelity test data collected with realistic boundary and earthquake loading conditions. The calibrated models will be incorporated in a probabilistic numerical framework to establish a design methodology for seismically resilient tall wood buildings, leading to a more diverse and eco-sustainable urban landscape. This project will provide local elementary school outreach activities, integrate participation of undergraduate minorities and underrepresented groups into the research activities, and foster graduate level curriculum innovations. Project data will be archived and made available publicly in the NSF-supported NHERI Data Depot (https://www.DesignSafe-CI.org). This award contributes to NSF's role in the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP).
The research objectives of this payload project are to: 1) bridge the fundamental mechanistic UFD models linking analytical and numerical models necessary for seismic response prediction of seismically resilient CLT-based SFRSs, 2) characterize the fundamental dynamic UFD behavior with validation and calibration through large-scale tests with realistic boundary conditions and earthquake loadings, and 3) integrate low-damage, friction-based damping system alternatives within a resilience-based seismic design methodology for tall wood buildings. To achieve these objectives, the test data collected will provide a critical pathway to reliably establish numerical and analytical models that extend the shake table test results to a broad range of archetype buildings. The seismic performance of mass-timber archetype building systems will be established through collapse risk assessment using incremental dynamic analyses. This will provide a first step in the longer term goal of establishing code-based seismic performance factors for CLT-based SFRSs.