TITLE:
Innovative earthquake resistant timber-glass buildings
AUTHORS:
Bostjan Ber, Miroslav Premrov, Iztok Sustersic, Bruno Dujic
KEYWORDS:
Timber; Glass; Seismic; Shake Table Testing; Experimental Mechanics
JOURNAL NAME:
Natural Science,
Vol.5 No.8A,
August
20,
2013
ABSTRACT: Over the past decade the use of large size glazing has increased with
timber structures. Most of the research works done so far have focused on the
building physics aspects of the glazing. This paper, however, deals with the
seismic behaviour of timber-glass systems. A series of experiments were
performed on the shaking table of the IZIIS institute inSkopje,Macedonia.
Oneand two-story full scale structures were subjected to a series of ground
motions, namely sinus sweep testing, natural
and modified ground motion accelerograms. All together 8 different
setups were tested in elastic and inelastic behaviour range. Displacements and
accelerations were measured in each floor as well as the slipping of walls,
uplifting of their corners and the shear deformation of the adhesive between the
glass panels and the timber frames. The tested combination of timber-glass
walls exhibited a rocking type of behaviour,
resulting in a desirable ductile failure of steel hold-downs and not
brittle failure of the glazing nor failure of the adhesive. Hence such a
combination of glass and timber in wall systems could potentially be used in
seismically active areas.