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NHERI TallWood MT Rocking Test 2023
NHERI Tall Wood Test 2023 Webinar Series
SEAOC Member: $150 full series / $40 session
Non-Member: $250 full series / $60 session
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Session 1
NHERI TallWood Project: Overview and Major Findings
Dr. Shiling Pei, Colorado School of Mines and John van de Lindt, Colorado State University
12 noon - 1 p.m. PST, Wed., April 24
An overview of the NHERI TallWood test program will be presented, including summary of the planning, design, construction, and testing activities. A high-level summary of major findings from the tests will also be discussed. As the first presentation in this webinar series, this will serve as the background introduction for all subsequent technical presentations.
Dr. Shiling Pei is an Associate Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado School of Mines. His research expertise includes mass timber structural systems and large scale dynamic testing. He is a Fellow member of ASCE and SEI, and serves on the Editorial board of ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering and Journal of Architectural Engineering.
Dr. John van de Lindt is the Harold H. Short Endowed Chair Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Colorado State University. Over the last two decades van de Lindt’s research program has focused on performance-based engineering and test bed applications of buildings and other systems for earthquakes, hurricanes, tsunamis, tornadoes and floods. He has led data collection efforts following hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, and tornadoes with the most recent being the December 2021 Midwest tornado outbreak. Professor van de Lindt is the Co-director for the National Institute of Standards and Technology-funded Center of Excellence (COE) for Risk-Based Community Resilience Planning headquartered at Colorado State University entering its eighth year. A major portion of the COE is to develop a computational platform to enable communities to measure their resilience to natural hazards. He serves as the Chair of the Executive Committee for the American Society of Civil Engineer’s (ASCE) Infrastructure Resilience Division, and has been involved with SEI committees for more than two decades. Van de Lindt has led more than 50 research projects including NEESWood and NEES-Soft at Japan’s E-Defense and NHERI facilities, respectively. As a result of these projects, he has published more than 450 technical articles and reports, and currently serves on a number of editorial boards including as the Editor-in-Chief for the ASCE Journal of Structural Engineering
Session 2:
Non-Linear Analysis and Design of the 10-Story Rocking Wall Systems and Comparison with Experimental Results
Jeff Berman, University of Washington
12 noon - 1 p.m. PST, Wed., May 1
To advance resilient seismic solutions for tall wood buildings, a shake table test program of a full-scale 10-story building with mass timber rocking walls was conducted in 2023 at the NHERI@UC San Diego outdoor shaking table. The mass timber rocking wall systems were designed using performance-based methods similar to those used for code-alternative designs in high seismic regions of the United States. A nonlinear model was developed using OpenSees and considering the results of previous testing of a two-story rocking wall building. Ground motions used for design and testing were selected and scaled for a range of hazard levels for the building’s design location in Seattle, WA. Nonlinear analyses at the various hazard levels indicated that the 10-story building was expected to perform as intended with little damage until MCER level shaking. The analyses also identified important larger-than expected shear and flexural demands in the mass timber walls near mid-height and at critical splice locations due to substantial contributions from higher modes. Testing of the 10-story building verified the predicted behavior, showing that the building met or exceeded all performance targets. The nonlinear model was shown to agree well with the experimental results in predicting overall building behavior and component level deformations.
Jeffrey Berman is a Professor at the University of Washington. He has twenty years of research experience in structural and earthquake engineering with projects involving large-scale testing, computational analysis, and the development of innovative systems for minimizing earthquake damage. He was the structural engineering lead on the M9 Project, a large NSF supported interdisciplinary research project investigating the impacts of magnitude 9 Cascadia Subduction Zone earthquakes on the Pacific Northwest. He is the Site Operations Director of the NSF supported NHERI Rapid Facility, a shared use equipment site supporting natural hazards reconnaissance headquartered at the UW and has served as the Director of the Large-Scale Structural Engineering Testing Laboratory at the UW. Professor Berman is active on building code committees, ATC projects, and is a co-Chair of the Washington State School Seismic Retrofit Program that approves state grant funding for school seismic and tsunami retrofit projects.
Session 3:
Design and Codification of Post-Tensioned Mass Timber Rocking Walls
Reid Zimmerman, KPFF
12 noon - 1 p.m. PST, Wed., May 8
Post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls are a well-suited seismic force-resisting system for mass timber buildings up to approximately 12 stories in height in regions of moderate to very high seismicity. Post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls will be the first codified timber seismic force-resisting system useable in the new International Building Code (IBC) Type IV mass timber high-rise construction over 65 feet tall, while advancing both resilient design and low-carbon initiatives. To date, post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls have been implemented via performance-based seismic design in the U.S. and abroad on designed and built projects. Extensive physical testing, analysis and design procedures have also been performed on post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls culminating in the 10-story shake table test as part of the NHERI TallWood project. The final step in codification of post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls is completion of an underway FEMA P-695 study to develop seismic design parameters (i.e., R, Cd and Ω0) for inclusion in ASCE/SEI 7. Attendees will learn about the prescriptive design procedures and proposed code provisions for post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls in advance of their final printing in ASCE/SEI 7.
Reid Zimmerman is the Technical Director for the Portland, Oregon office of KPFF. He has focused his career on performance-based, resilient seismic design and innovative technologies such as seismic isolation, energy dissipation, rocking/re-centering, and low-damage systems. Reid regularly collaborates on applied research with universities and enjoys translating this research into state-of-the-art solutions for professional practice. He serves on multiple national code committees including as chair of task committees for ASCE 7 and ASCE 41.
Session 4:
Gravity Systems, Connections, Ancillary Supporting Tests at SST Lab
Steve Pryor, Simpson Strong-Tie
12 noon - 1 p.m. PST, Wed., May 22
As the popularity of mass timber construction continues to grow, construction in areas of high seismic hazard is becoming more prevalent. At the same time, changing building codes are adopting standards that permit the use of mass timber to construct buildings to new heights with multiple 20 plus story buildings planned. Lateral force resisting systems (LFRS) used in previously constructed tall wood structures have typically been those already code approved, such as concrete shear walls or steel braced frames. Independent of the chosen LFRS, the need to ensure seismic deformation compatibility in the gravity system connections is vital to ensuring the integrity of the structure during a seismic event. In an effort to develop a wood-based solution for the LFRS in mass timber (MT) structures, the NHERI TallWood project team tested a full-scale, ten-story MT building on the six-Degree-of-freedom Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table at the University of California San Diego. The building utilized an innovative post-tensioned mass timber rocking wall lateral system that aimed to enable damage-free performance under design level earthquakes. This ambitious test program planned to subject the test building to dozens of strong motions to quantify the behavior of the structure and solidify the design methodology for this type of LFRS. To facilitate such a design a new class of gravity connections and detailing procedures were developed to not only survive the demands imposed by the extensive seismic testing program, but to also be just as resilient as the post-tensioned rocking wall LFRS. In addition to innovative gravity connections, innovative glued-in-rod splices were designed for the 10-story shear walls. The development and performance of the beam-to-column, column-to-column, column-to-foundation, rocking wall out-of-plane stability connections, and GIR splices will be discussed in this presentation.
Steve Pryor is a structural engineer from earthquake-prone California in the western region of the United States. He has been with Simpson Strong-Tie for 27 years and currently serves as their Advanced Research Manager. Prior to joining Simpson, Steve was a practicing structural engineer in California designing residential, commercial, and industrial facilities. Steve has participated on a number of building code committees and has authored numerous papers. With a career dedicated to understanding the seismic performance of structures, Steve has led Simpson’s partnerships with a number of universities in ground-breaking research into performance-based seismic design, soft-story retrofits, and post-tensioned mass timber rocking walls, as well as developing new structural steel lateral force resisting systems. Along with many others at Simpson Strong-Tie, Steve has a passion for trying to find practical solutions to difficult structural problems.
Session 5:
Performance of Nonstructural Walls Detailed for Drift Compatibility
Keri Ryan, University of Nevada Reno
12 noon - 1 p.m. PST, Wed., May 29
An essential aspect of building resilience is assurance that non-structural components (e.g. nonstructural walls, facades, ceiling, piping and egress) sustain minimal damage or are easily repairable. The test specimen included a variety of exterior façade assemblies and interior partition walls detailed to accommodate movement and thus reduce the damage to these components. This presentation will overview the philosophy in selecting the subassemblies, the component details, the observed performance, and the synthesis of takeaways for the profession.
Keri Ryan is the E.W. McKenzie Foundation Endowed Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. She specializes in earthquake engineering and protective systems for high seismic performance, with application to buildings and bridges. She was the PI of the U.S. National Science Foundation funded “Tools for Isolation and Protective Systems” (or TIPS) project to address impediments to the wider application of seismic isolation systems, during which she observed firsthand the performance issues related to nonstructural components. She has been collaborating with the NHERI Tallwood team since 2016 to develop and validate a resilience-based design methodology for a new class of structural systems using mass timber rocking wall systems that considers the important contributions of nonstructural components.
Session 6:
Performance of Full-Scale Resilient Stair Tower
Tara C. Hutchinson
12 noon - 1 p.m. PST, Wed., June 5
This discussion will dovetail on prior presentations within this webinar series, with particular focus on the design, instrumentation, and experimental evaluation of the seismic response of a unique 10-story full-scale stair tower system serving as the sole egress/ingress to the Tallwood (10-story mass timber) building specimen. Tasked with remaining functional following even the most severe scaled (MCER) 3DOF earthquake motions, various drift-release connections were installed strategically along the flight and landing interfaces of the stair tower. Details implemented to accommodate floor-to-floor movement, their observed heavier, as well as main takeaways for practice will be discussed.
Tara Hutchinson is a Professor in the Department of Structural Engineering at the University of California, San Diego with research interests in geotechnical, structural and earthquake engineering. Much of her efforts involve large-scale shake table and fixed reaction-type experimentation. Hutchinson has contributed to several multi-University-Industry collaborations aimed at contributing to our understanding of the seismic performance of nonstructural systems, including the “Building Nonstructural Components and Systems (BNCS)” program funded by the National Science Foundation, which was the first complete building-nonstructural system-level shake table test program conducted in the U.S. She has been collaborating with the NHERI Tallwood team since 2021 to implement and evaluate the design of a seismically resilient stair system within this unique capstone 10-story mass timber building test program.