Introduction
CLT is an engineered wood product that is becoming increasingly popular in building construction. Balloon-style construction has arisen as a cost-effective way to build certain types of CLT buildings, but it is not currently permitted in high-seismic areas. This project, funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, seeks to remove to current code barrier and to allow engineers to use balloon-style CLT walls as the main lateral force resisting system. The part of the project that has been tasked to the team at Texas A&M is testing of typical connections – both wall-to-wall and wall-to-floor. This is being done through the construction, instrumentation, and loading of cross-laminated timber connection specimens in a 100-kip tension-compression servo-hydraulic testing frame. Along with experimental testing of every design configuration, each connection is modeled with finite element analysis software to develop models that accurately represent their behavior.
Poster
