Seismic Damage Evaluation Model of Chinese Ancient Timber Buildings

Abstract

Lack of the evaluation method for timber structure has been developed as a critical problem in decades to protect the ancient timber building. Therefore, it is essential to conduct an intensive study on the failure mechanism of the ancient timber building in order to precisely predict the structural failure prior to earthquake and evaluate the seismic damage and structure maintenance after the earthquake. Based on the test of dovetail column-frame and bracket sets under low reversed cyclic loading and the shaking table test of overall structure, the “potential of destruction-resistance” of the two energy-consuming components under low reversed cyclic loading and the energy dissipated of each energy-consuming component under various earthquake conditions were investigated. A seismic damage evaluation model of the energy-consuming components/structure based on the “potential of failure-resistance” and the energy dissipation was developed. With the failure coefficient, the damage level of each energy-consuming component and the overall structure can be evaluated respectively. Finally, the seismic damage evaluation model is validated by the experiment result.