Full-scale shake table test of a two-story mass-timber building with resilient rocking walls

The NHERI TallWood project is a U.S. National Science Foundation-funded four-year research project focusing on the development of a resilient tall wood building design philosophy. One of the first major tasks within the project was to test a full-scale two-story mass timber building at the largest shake table in the U.S., the NHERI@UCSD’s outdoor shake table facility, to study the dynamic behaviour of a mass timber building with a resilient rocking wall system. The specimen consisted of two coupled two-story tall post-tensioned cross laminated timber rocking walls surrounded by mass timber gravity frames simulating a realistic portion of a building floor plan at full scale. Diaphragms consisted of bare CLT at the first floor level and concrete-topped, composite CLT at the roof. The specimen was subjected to ground motions scaled to three intensity levels representing frequent, design basis, and maximum considered earthquakes. In this paper, the design and implementation of this test program is summarized. The performance of the full building system under these different levels of seismic intensity is presented.