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Evaluation of benefits at a regional scale of new strategies to improve the seismic performance of low-rise residential construction

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Abstract

Light-frame low-rise wood dwellings have typically had adequate levels of safety in terms of collapse prevention. Nevertheless, damage to this type of construction due to earthquakes has resulted in large economic losses and thousands of displaced families. This paper evaluates the benefits, on a regional scale, of using a recently developed design and construction method referred to as unibody. This cost-effective method increases the lateral strength and, particularly, the lateral stiffness of walls of wood-frame houses, leading to significant reductions in lateral displacement demands. For houses at a given distance from the seismic source, reduced displacement demands translate into much smaller probabilities of damage. Consequently, for a region affected by a seismic event, this translates into a much smaller area of damaged houses. It is found that, for short-period structures, increasing the lateral stiffness is more efficient than increasing the lateral strength. Thus, when using unibody construction, which greatly increases the lateral stiffness of wood-frame houses, the number of damaged residential units is greatly reduced. It is shown that these relationships are strongly nonlinear and are positively combined resulting in a substantial reduction of seismic risk on a regional scale.

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Abbreviations

A 1st−c :

Area of one-story houses with conventional construction affected with probabilities of exceeding DS2 of at least 10%

A 1st−u :

Area of one-story houses with unibody construction affected with probabilities of exceeding DS2 of at least 10%

A 2st−c :

Area of two-story houses with conventional construction affected with probabilities of exceeding DS2 of at least 10%

A 2st−u :

Area of two-story houses with unibody construction affected with probabilities of exceeding DS2 of at least 10%

A p :

Area of houses affected with probabilities of exceeding DS2 of at least p

β c1 :

Ratio between the roof lateral displacement of a conventional house and the lateral displacement of a single-degree-of-freedom system with the same period

β u1 :

Ratio between the roof lateral displacement of a unibody house and the lateral displacement of a single-degree-of-freedom system with the same period

β c2 :

Ratio between the maximum peak IDR and the peak roof drift ratio in a conventional house

β u2 :

Ratio between the maximum peak IDR and the peak roof drift ratio in a unibody house

β c3 :

Ratio between the peak inelastic and peak elastic lateral displacements of a single-degree-of-freedom system with a period equal to the one of the conventional house

β u3 :

Ratio between the peak inelastic and peak elastic lateral displacements of a single-degree-of-freedom system with a period equal to the one of the unibody house

C f :

Correction term for inelastic displacement ratio, as defined by Akkar and Miranda (2004)

C R :

Inelastic displacement ratio, as defined by Ruiz-García and Miranda (2003, 2007)

C y :

Normalized strength (i.e., yield strength normalized by the weight) of a system

Δi :

Inelastic displacement demand of a single-degree-of-freedom system

C JB :

Joyner–Boore source-to-site distance

D p JB :

Joyner–Boore distance associated with a probability of damage p

DS 2 :

Spalling of stucco and separation of stucco and sheathing from studs in light framed wood shear walls with structural sheathing (OSB or plywood), with exterior stucco finish and interior gypsum wallboard, designed with hold-downs

H :

Total height of a building

IDR c :

Maximum peak interstory drift ratio in any story of a house with conventional construction

IDR u :

Maximum peak interstory drift ratio in any story of a house with unibody construction

K c :

Elastic (initial) stiffness of a house with conventional construction

K u :

Elastic (initial) stiffness of a house with unibody construction

M w :

Earthquake moment magnitude

P c :

Probability of exceeding DS2 in house with conventional construction

P u :

Probability of exceeding DS2 in house with unibody construction

PGV :

Peak ground velocity

R c :

Relative strength ratio of a house with conventional construction

R u :

Relative strength ratio of a house with unibody construction

S a :

Pseudo-acceleration spectral ordinate

S d :

Displacement spectral ordinate

S v :

Velocity spectral ordinate

T c :

Fundamental period of vibration of a house with conventional construction

T u :

Fundamental period of vibration of a house with unibody construction

V S30 :

Average shear wave velocity in the upper 30 meters

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Acknowledgements

This study was motivated and has greatly benefited from a previous research investigation of the second author with Professors Greg Deierlein and Benjamin Fell, and graduate students Scott Swensen, Amy Hopkins, Ezra Jampole and Cristian Acevedo in which, with financial support from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under CMMI-NEES Grant No. 1135029, the “unibody” method of construction was developed and experimentally tested. Their collaboration and comments to this work are greatly appreciated. The authors would like to also acknowledge CONICYT – Becas Chile, the Nancy Grant Chamberlain Fellowship, the Charles H. Leavell Fellowship, the Shah Graduate Student Fellowship, and the John A. Blume Fellowship for their financial support to the first author for conducting his doctoral studies at Stanford under the supervision of the second author. Finally, the authors would like to also thank the two anonymous reviewers who provided valuable comments and suggestions to improve this paper.

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  1. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, John A. Blume Earthquake Engineering Center, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, 94305-4020, USA

    Pablo Heresi & Eduardo Miranda

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  1. Pablo Heresi
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Correspondence to Pablo Heresi.

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Heresi, P., Miranda, E. Evaluation of benefits at a regional scale of new strategies to improve the seismic performance of low-rise residential construction. Bull Earthquake Eng 18, 2783–2806 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10518-020-00804-4

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