Performance-Based Seismic Assessment of a Wood-Frame House With Strength and Stiffness Enhancements

Abstract eng:
While light-frame residential structures generally provide a high degree of life safety, significant damage and financial losses can result from moderate and severe earthquakes. Damaging seismic deformations can be mitigated by providing supplementary strength and stiffness to the lateral force resisting system. This can be accomplished in a cost-effective manner by enhancing existing partition walls and cladding through the use of improved mechanical and adhesive connections between sheathing and framing. An extensive test program has been carried out to characterize the performance of enhanced sheathing-to-framing fastener connections as well as walls, room enclosures, and structures built using these enhancements. The test program culminated in the shake table testing of a full-scale two-story wood-frame house. This paper describes the performance-based evaluation of the tested enhanced wood-frame house. The analysis was performed using multiple stripe analysis (MSA) applied to a three-dimensional nonlinear structural model. Probabilities of collapse and exceeding damaging drift thresholds were calculated for the strengthened and stiffened structure as well and for a comparable house designed to code standards with conventional wood-frame walls. The analysis indicates that instituting strength and stiffness enhancements reduces the probability of collapse by more than fifty percent, while decreasing the probability of encountering drifts that would require wall repair by approximately sixty to eighty percent. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of strength and stiffness enhancements in limiting seismic damage to light-frame residential structures while also providing enhanced life safety.

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