A novel wood-based hybrid system for seismic performance increase of mid-rise building structures

A new hybrid system consisting of wood shear walls, concrete columns, bracing system, and viscous damper devices is introduced in this paper. A benchmark wood building is adopted here as a case study, and different configurations of the new hybrid system are applied on it in order to investigate its seismic performance under some near-fault ground motion records. The performance base design method is used to design the considered models. In order to make the models comparable, their performance levels are considered to be identical. Detailed finite element models are built in OpenSees software to conduct nonlinear static and dynamic analyses. The parametric study is done to optimize the viscous damper system parameters. At the end, the damage potential of the models is investigated through their fragilities. The results demonstrate the high potential of the proposed system in improving the seismic performance of the mid-rise wood buildings. It is also observed that the good behavior of the system is achieved when the viscous damper coefficient and its supporting tendon cross-sectional area is dependently increased.