Seismic Equivalence Parameters for Engineered Woodframe Wood Structural Panel Shear Walls

Seismic equivalency parameters for drift capacity, component overstrength, and ductility for woodframe wood structural panel shear walls have previously been defined using a collection of 48 different walls tested with the CUREE cyclic load protocol (Waltz et al. 2008). When establishing minimum seismic performance parameters for new lateral force resisting systems to prove equivalence to woodframe wood structural panel shear walls, this initial reference database was viewed as being representative and sufficient. In the work summarized by this paper, 32 additional shear walls were tested to compare with and supplement the reference database. The new wall tests cover the practical extremes in nail diameter, panel thickness, and nail spacing for woodframe wood structural panel shear wall construction as defined by 2005 Special Design Provisions for Wind and Seismic (2005 Wind and Seismic )A F&PA 2005) and the 2006 International Building Code (2006 IBC) (ICC 2006). The seismic equivalency parameters developed using the new 32 wall test set aligned very well with the distributions observed in the original 48 wall database. When data from the current study and the reference database are combined, the new database consists of 80 cyclic wall tests from four different laboratories that encompass a broad range of woodframe shear wall configurations. The average drift capacity, component overstrength, and ductility performance parameters for the combined data set were within 3 percent of the original estimates. The seismic equivalency criteria that would be derived using the combined database were also within 3 percent of those originally developed.