RESEARCH ARTICLE


Three-Dimensional Seismic Collapse Analysis of Wooden Houses Using Rigid Body-Spring Method



E. A. Tingatinga*, H. Kawakami, S.M. Shrestha
Geosphere Research Institute, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan.


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Creative Commons License
© 2008 Tingatinga et al.

open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.

Correspondence: * Address correspondence to this author at the Geosphere Research Institute, Saitama University, Saitama, Japan. Tel/Fax: +81488583543; E-mail:kaw@kiban.civil.saitama-u.ac.jp


Abstract

In Japan, the past few decades revealed the vulnerability of wood-framed residential buildings to strong earthquakes. The Kobe earthquake in 1995 caused tremendous loss of lives resulting from the collapse and damage of such structures that significantly affected economic condition. This disaster motivated many researchers to study the mechanisms of collapse of engineering structures in order to prevent further loss of lives in the future. In this paper, an innovative methodology in simulating the dynamic response of wood-framed buildings, for purposes of seismic performance assessment and retrofitting, is presented. The proposed method, which can simulate inelastic behavior of structures, is capable of showing realistic progressive collapse mechanisms and accurate seismic response of structures. The sequence of analyses and results in the form of computer animations are used to help building owners gain a better understanding of the seismic performance of their buildings before and after the structural reinforcement. Applications to real wood-framed residential buildings were used to show the effectiveness of the methodology in seismic performance assessment as well as retrofit plan development.