Cross-laminated timber shear wall seismic force resisting system in U.S. codes

Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) offers several advantages to the wood building market, such as the potential for mass production, prefabrication, construction speed, and sustainability as an environmentally friendly and renewable construction product. Good thermal insulation, acoustic performance, and fire ratings are some additional benefits of the system. Despite these advantages, the lack of a current design approach is one of the challenges inhibiting widespread adoption of CLT in North America. One area that required attention was the development of a CLT lateral shear wall system that can be used in seismic and high-wind regions of the United States. CLT shear wall-based Seismic Force Resisting Systems (SFRS) are not recognized in current U.S. design codes.

A five-year systematic research effort integrated a suite of CLT building archetypes, a new design methodology, component and systems tests, nonlinear static and dynamic structural modeling, and incremental time history analyses and incorporated uncertainties. All phases of development resulted in both the structural design procedure and associated seismic design parameters that led to a code changes proposal at the Building Seismic Safety Council (BSSC), American Wood Council (AWC), and American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE).