Hongyu Wu - Module 8 - Part 1

Journal Entry For
Module 8 - Make Your Pitch
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Proposed Solution: Evaluating Shear Wall Dimension on First Story of 3-Story Building

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Background: This picture shows a typical soft story failure of building under earthquake, one of the most common failure mechanism in the last earthquake in Turkey and all over the world. Since the first floor of the building in many countries are liked to be designated for retail space, it needs large opening area of wall to the street. However, one important drawback of this design is that the first floor often times has significantly lower stiffness than the upper floor, and therefore very susceptible for failure and collapse during earthquake.

Intended users

• Structural Engineers

• Architects

• Real Estate Developers

• Retailers

• Home owners

Need you’re trying to provide a solution or support for

This proposed tool can help evaluating how first floor shear wall dimension can impact the interstory drift on first level, given various different building design, as well as how to maximize the opening on first level while having acceptable drift. Whether it is structural engineer who design the structural system of the building, or architects and developers who want to leverage on the building and shear wall dimension while keeping the occupants safe under earthquake, they can use the tool to rapidly generate design options for the building type and functionality they want.

Inputs

• First Floor Shear Wall Opening Width on Each Bay

• First Floor Shear Wall Height

• Building Width

• Second & Third Floor Height

• Shear Wall Thickness (constant)

Underlying logic of the model you’ll implement

The tool will generate the 3-story building model based on the inputs above and calculate the total floor area for the calculation of seismic force, the first floor opening area, the first floor facade total area, and the interstory drift of first floor. The seismic force and interstory drift are calculated by equivalent lateral force procedure, and the stiffness of shear wall is estimated by simplified equation with height of shear wall on each story, shear wall thickness, and width of shear wall.

Outputs

• First Floor Shear Wall Opening To Total Wall Area Ratio

• First Story Seismic Drift