Parametric analyses and feasibility study of moment-resisting timber frames under service load
Aivars Vilguts, Haris Stamatopoulos, Kjell Arne Malo
Abstract
Over the last decades, the increasing urbanization and environmental challenges have created a demand for mid-rise and high-rise timber buildings in modern cities. The major challenge for mid-rise and high-rise timber buildings typically is the fulfillment of the serviceability requirements, especially limitation with respect to the wind-induced displacements and accelerations. The purpose of the present paper is to evaluate the feasibility and the limitations of moment-resisting timber frames under service load according to the present regulations. The parametric analyses investigate the effects of the rotational stiffness of beam-to-column and column-to-foundation connections, storey number and height, number and length of bays, column cross-section dimensions and spacing between frames on the overall serviceability performance of the frames. Elastic and modal analysis were carried out for a total of 17,800 planar moment-resisting timber frames with different parameters by use of Abaqus Finite Element (abbr. FE) software. Finally, the obtained results were used to derive simple expressions for the lateral displacement, maximum inter-story drift, fundamental eigen-frequency, mode shapes and acceleration.