Fragility curves for woodframe structures subjected to lateral wind loads

This paper describes a procedure to develop fragility curves for woodframe structures subjected to lateral wind loads. The fragilities are cast in terms of horizontal displacement criteria (maximum drift at the top of the shearwalls). The procedure is illustrated through the development of fragility curves for one and two-story residential woodframe buildings ill high wind regions. The structures were analyzed using a monotonic pushover analysis to develop the relationship between displacement and base shear. The base shear values were then transformed to equivalent nominal wind speeds using information on the geometry of the baseline buildings and the wind load equations (and associated parameters) in ASCE 7-02. Displacement vs. equivalent nominal wind speed curves were used to determine the critical wind direction, and Monte Carlo simulation was used along with wind load parameter statistics provided by Ellingwood and Tekie (1999) to construct displacement vs. wind speed curves. Wind speeds corresponding to a presumed limit displacement were used to construct fragility curves. Since the fragilities were fit well using a lognormal CDF and had similar logarithmic standard deviations (xi), a quick analysis to develop approximate fragilities is possible, and this also is illustrated. Finally, a compound fragility Curve, defined as a weighted combination of individual fragilities, is developed.