Experimental study on seismic performance of steel frame and light-frame timber shear wall hybrid structure through shaking table tests

In order to investigate the seismic performance of steel frame and light-frame timber shear wall hybrid structure, a 2:3 scaled model was designed and tested through shaking table tests. Four earthquake records, i.e. Wenchuan, Canterbury, El Centro and Kobe earthquakes, were adopted in the tests. Three seismic intensities, i.e. frequent, basic and rare earthquakes were also considered, and the corresponding peak ground accelerations were 0.14g, 0.40g and 0.80g, respectively. The seismic responses and the failure modes of the hybrid structure were acquired. The test result indicates that the maximum inter-story drift ratio is 0.15% under frequent earthquakes and reaches 0.85% under rare earthquakes, which satisfies the requirement on deformation of structures in Chinese code. During the tests, the steel frame and the frame-to-wall connections of the structure remained intact, and the main failure mode was the damage to the nailed connection of the light-frame timber shear walls at the edges of the OSB boards. Under frequent earthquakes, more than 55.1% of the seismic shear force was resisted by timber shear walls, which increased the lateral resistance of the structure effectively. With the increase of the seismic intensity, the stiffness of timber shear walls degraded gradually, and the proportion of shear force carried by timber shear walls decreased. However, the shear force in wood shear walls is more than 39.9% of the seismic shear force in the hybrid structure even under major earthquakes. © 2019, Editorial Office of Journal of Building Structures. All right reserved.