NONLINEAR FINITE-ELEMENT MODEL OF COMPLETE LIGHT-FRAME WOOD STRUCTURES

A light-frame wood structure is an assemblage of several components such as walls, floors, and roof, joined by intercomponent connections such as nails or metal plates. Behavior of a full structure reflects the interactive behavior of the individual components and connections. Whereas individual substructures have been in investigated both experimentally and analytically, individual substructures and components of a light-frame wood building have never been incorporated into a full-structure model. This research provides an analytical method to investigate the behavior of light-frame wood structures loaded by static loads. Special attention is given to load sharing among wall components. A one-story wood-frame building (4.9 x 9.8 m) was tested, under cyclic quasistatic loads. Results of the experiment were used to verify a nonlinear finite-element model of the full building. The full-structure model was an assemblage of superelements, representing floor and roof, and quasisuperelements, representing walls and intercomponent connections. The special quasisuperelements were energetically equivalent to the detailed three-dimensional finite-element models developed to represent the walls and intercomponent connections. Boundary conditions and loads used in the experiment were applied to the model, and deformations and reaction forces were compared. Experimental and analytical results agreed closely.