Tall Cross-Laminated Timber Building: Design and Performance Session WW300 Experimental and Modeling Studies on Wood Frame Buildings

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is widely perceived as the most promising option for building high-rise wood structures due to its structural robustness and good fire resistance. While gravity load design of a tall CLT building is relatively easy to address because all CLT walls can be utilized as bearing walls, design for significant lateral loads (earthquake and wind) can be challenging due to the lack of ductility in current CLT construction methods that utilize wall panels with low aspect ratios (height to length). Keeping the wall panels at high aspect ratios can provide a more ductile response, but it will inevitably increase the material and labor costs associated with the structure. In this study, a solution to this dilemma is proposed by introducing damping and elastic restoring devices in a multi-story CLT building to achieve ductile response, while keeping the integrity of low aspect ratio walls to reduce the cost of construction and improve fire resistance. The design methodology for incorporating the response modification devices is proposed and the performance of the as-designed structure under seismic is evaluated.