Seismic Behavior of Chinese Traditional Timber Frames with Masonry Infill Wall: Experimental Tests and Hysteretic Model

ABSTRACT

Traditional timber frames were often filled with timber or masonry infill walls as enclosure components. In this paper, four Chinese traditional timber frame specimens with different types of masonry infill walls were tested under reverse cyclic loading. The contributions of infill walls on seismic performance of timber frames in terms of failure mode, strength, stiffness and energy dissipation were investigated. The experimental results indicated that the masonry infill walls can significantly improve the seismic behaviors of the structure. Masonry infill wall in the timber structure can be regarded as a key component to bearing capacity and energy dissipation capacity. Beyond that, an improved hysteretic model, which is able to accurately capture the nonlinear behavior of the timber frame with infill wall in terms of the force-displacement response was proposed. Good correlation between the proposed hysteretic model and test results indicates the validity of the improved method.

KEYWORDS:

• Chinese traditional timber frame
• cyclic loading
• energy dissipation
• hysteretic model
• masonry infill wall

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding support received from the National Key Research and Development Program (Grant No. 2017YFC0703507) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51878550). This research was also supported by projects of Education Department of Shaanxi Provincial Government of China (Grant No. 18JS066).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [51878550];Education Department of Shaanxi Provincial Government of China [18JS066];National Key Research and Development Program [2017YFC0703507].