Seismic Reliability Analysis of Wood Shear Walls Using Different Methods

Abstract

Seismic reliability analysis of wood structures has to take into consideration the uncertainties from many sources. This paper presented three methods to deal with the uncertainties from ground motion records, intensity measure, and resistance. The application of the methods in analyzing wood shear walls was also discussed. The traditional method calculates the exceeding probability of drift demand from conditional distributions given intensity levels. The second method determines the exceeding probability of drift demand from conditional distributions given ground motion records. The second method is computationally efficient and relatively accurate by using the mean of conditional exceeding probabilities. The third method is the quasi-Monte Carlo simulation method. Sequence numbers can be used to improve the efficiency of simulation analysis. These methods were used to analyze three wood shear walls. The shear wall model is a mechanics-based nail analogue with parameters validated by test results. The results from the three methods are very similar, which indicates that the three methods may be equally used in seismic reliability analysis of wood shear walls.