Abstract

Along the seismically active west coast of the United States (US), heavy concrete and masonry walled buildings with lightweight wood or steel flexible roof diaphragms are commonplace and have grown in size over the years. The current force levels found in ASCE’s Minimum Design Loads and Associated Criteria for Buildings and Other Structures (ASCE 7-16) for designing the out-of-plane wall anchorage system in these buildings is the result from a series of California earthquakes, causing a series of structural failures and subsequently revisions to the Uniform Building Code (UBC). This trial-and-error approach is the basis for current wall anchorage code provisions. However, the current anchorage force levels have remained largely unchanged since their introduction in the 1997 UBC (UBC, 1997), and have not been fully tested by strong ground motions in the field. In an attempt to provide a more proactive approach than waiting for the next strong earthquake, the current wall anchorage design force levels found in ASCE 7-16 are evaluated to determine their validity using a two dimensional numerical framework with a series of nonlinear time history dynamic analyses on various building archetypes. The results of this study reveal that the current wall anchorage design forces are generally appropriate, but with potentially some very significant exceptions.

Disciplines

Architectural Engineering

Number of Pages

20

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URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/aen_fac/165