Seismic Reliability Analysis of Diagonal-Braced and Structural-Panel-Sheathed Wood Shear Walls

Abstract

Reliability-based assessment of seismic performance of wood shear walls needs to consider many uncertainties arising from earthquake ground motions, material properties, carried mass, and analytical models. Using a response surface method with importance sampling, this paper presents a seismic reliability analysis on eight types of diagonal-braced and structural-panel-sheathed shear walls which are commonly used in modern post-and-beam wood buildings. A recently developed wood shear wall model was used to simulate the seismic response of the shear walls. The shear wall model parameters were calibrated and verified using a reversed cyclic test database. Peak wall drift was chosen as the performance criteria to estimate the failure probabilities of the walls with respect to two performance expectations. The results presented herein showed that the seismic reliability of the structural-panel-sheathed walls was higher than that of the diagonal-braced walls.