Static and Shake Table Testing of Suspended Ceilings and Assessment of the U.S. Building Code Requirements

Significant damage and collapse of suspended ceilings have been observed in past earthquakes. To address such vulnerability, design and installation requirements have been introduced in the building codes. Most of the additional requirements were based on subjective post-earthquake observations and limited laboratory testing. Starting in early 2000s, the major suspended ceiling manufacturers in the US have undertaken shake table testing of a number of ceiling installation. A majority of the test results had been proprietary and have focused toward specific installations produced by a given manufacturer. This was followed by large scale testing in both the US and Japan to investigate the response of ceilings as part of the building environment and assess the viability of tests conducted by manufacturers on smaller test frames. Separately, testing, and evaluation of suspended ceilings have been completed by authors and presented in this paper. The discussed testing comprised both quasi-static and shake table experiments. The testing used a large array of instrumentation to correlate the findings to member capacities.