Full-scale experiment on reinforced Taiwanese traditional timber frames

Many traditional timber structures were destroyed by the major earthquakes of 1999. The post earthquake survey showed the beam-to-column connections will affect the failure mode of the entire timber frame, some connection types leaded to collapse of the timber frame. The field survey indicates that there exist many traditional timber frames in Taiwan that are vulnerable to the earthquake due to insufficient seismic resistance. Hence there is an urgent need in Taiwan to propose a method to reinforce the seismic capacity of these traditional timber frames. In this study, three full-scale specimens were firstly fabricated and tested. Cyclic loading was applied to obtain the hysteretic loop of the specimens. After the test, one of the specimens was pulled back to its origin position and the cracked mud shear wall was replastered. Another specimen was reinforced by inserting hard wood strips into wood shear walls and softwood pegs into beam-column connections. The results of performance of reinforced timber frame were compared with that of unreinforced timber frame. It appears that the replastered specimen show significant lower strength than that before test, and reinforced specimen can recover the strength. Static push-over analyses were also carried out to analyze performance of unreinforced timber structures with acceptable agreements.