Experimental seismic behavior of a five-storey double-midply wood shear wall in a full scale building

In July 2009, a full-scale six-storey platform wood frame apartment building was subjected to a series of earthquakes at the world’s largest shake table in Miki, Japan. Two double-midply shear wall stacks were installed in the building from the first storey through to the fifth storey. A continuous anchor tie-down system (ATS) was used to prevent overturning and allow the shear walls to develop their full lateral load capacities. This paper focuses on the behavior of the stacked double-midply shear wall in a full-scale midrise building during a series of triaxial shakes scaled for the city of Los Angeles, California. The stacked midply shear wall achieved a maximum interstorey deformation of 40.4 mm (equivalent to 1.64% drift). The uplift forces measured at the bottom storey of the stacked wall exceeded 760 kN, indicating the need for substantial tie-down systems for this type of wall when utilized in a midrise platform wood frame building.