NHERI Converging Design — Six-Story Shake-Table Test

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Phase II shake-table testing of a six-story mass timber building at UC San Diego as part of the NHERI Converging Design project.

Overview

Phase II experimental testing of a six-story mass timber building at the NHERI@UC San Diego Large High Performance Outdoor Shake Table, completed in January 2024. The work is part of the NHERI Converging Design project—a collaboration among investigators at Oregon State, Stanford, Colorado State, and Penn State, supported by NSF, USDA ARS, the TallWood Design Institute, and industry partners.

Lateral system

The lateral system combined:

  1. Post-tensioned mass ply panel (MPP) rocking walls with buckling-restrained boundary elements (BRBs) on the first-story east and west walls
  2. Post-tensioned CLT rocking walls with u-shaped flexural plate (UFP) energy dissipators across all six stories

The mass timber wall panels showed no notable damage; the BRBs and UFPs yielded with minimal localized damage as intended. The building re-centered without residual drift during Design- and MCER-level shaking.

Shake-table videos

Recordings from January 19, 2024:

Aerial views during MCER-level shaking — 2010 Ferndale earthquake (MCER) and 1994 Northridge earthquake at 1.1× MCER.

Ground-level view inside the building of MPP rocking walls and BRBs during the 1994 Northridge earthquake at 1.1× MCER.