Seismic performance of post and beam timber buildings I: model development and verification

This paper presents a structural model called “PB3D” to perform nonlinear time history analyses of post and beam timber buildings under seismic loads. The model treats the three-dimensional structure as an assembly of roof/floor diaphragms and wall subsystems. The roof/floor diaphragms are modeled by beam elements and diagonal brace elements in order to take into account the in-plane stiffness. The wall system consists of vertical beam elements, for wall posts, as well as nonlinear shear springs to consider the contribution of diagonal wall bracing members or sheathing panels. The hysteretic characteristics of the shear springs are represented by a simplified, mechanics-based model named a “pseudo-nail”. Standard finite element procedure is used to construct the system’s equation of motion, which is solved by Newmark’s integration. The model was verified against shake test results of a three-story post and beam building subjected to strong ground motions scaled to the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Model predictions agreed very well with the test results in terms of base shear forces and inter-story drift responses. This model provides a robust and efficient tool to study the seismic behavior of post and beam timber buildings.