Structural Design and Performance of Composite Wall-Foundation Connector Elements.

摘要

Field observations following extreme earthquake events and laboratory testing identify a key area to improve upon in wood-frame shear walls as maintaining sill plate structural integrity. Due to current load paths through the sill plate when resisting overturning, coupled by construction misalignments, traditional sill plate designs split along the line of anchor bolts and lose lateral resistance. In addition, this location in a structure is susceptible to moisture infiltration. Therefore, structural member degradation from moisture and the required use of potentially hazardous preservative treatments makes it advantageous to develop durable wood thermoplastic composites (WPCs) as structural members for this location. This paper presents an experimental investigation and proof of concept of the utilization of WPC members as sill plates in wood shear walls. Connection and component testing of one polypropylene hollow section (PP10) identified weakness in the perpendicular-to-extrusion direction, though with the use of reinforcement, performance was improved.