Influence of wood infill walls on the seismic performance of Chinese traditional timber structure by shaking table tests

Wood infill walls have significant effect on the seismic performance of Chinese traditional timber structure. Based on cyclic tests of wood infill walls, a 1:6 scaled traditional timber structure, one direction with wood infill walls and the other direction without ones, were fabricated and subjected to artificial and recorded earthquake waves through shaking table tests. The dynamic characteristics, dynamic responses and energy dissipation in the two directions were comparatively discussed to quantify the contribution of wood infill walls. The test results indicated that the natural frequencies of the model with wood infill walls was much greater than that without ones, increased more than 25%, while the increase of damping ratio was relatively insignificant before experiencing earthquakes. And the acceleration responses of the structure incorporating wood infill walls were moderately increased due to the additional lateral stiffness provided by wood infill walls, while the displacement responses dramatically decreased, especially under strong earthquakes. In addition, the wood infill walls effectively decreased the proportion of plastic strain energy in total energy, which can contribute to reduce structural damage.