Seismic Resilience of Timber Homes

The vast majority of residential buildings in California are wood-frame structures. A home is typically a very large investment for families, and damage to the home can be detrimental to a family’s economic success. Thus, reducing the economic impacts of an earthquake on residential timber housing is crucial. A full scale, two-story section of a residential timber house is in construction in the Parson’s Geotechnical and Earthquake Engineering Laboratory on the Cal Poly campus in San Luis Obispo, California. Once built it will be put through earthquake simulation tests on a shake table with various magnitudes of seismic activity. Next, an innovative self-centering dissipative system will be designed and implemented into the structure to evaluate the effectiveness of solutions such as these in reducing costly damages. Through experimental testing, we hope to inform future building codes and shift focus from life safety to performance-based analysis.