DEVELOPMENT OF A LOADING HISTORY FOR SEISMIC TESTING OF ARCHITECTURALGLASS IN A SHOP-FRONT WALL SYSTEM

Moderate earthquakes can pose significant threats to the serviceabilit y and structural integrity of the architectural glazing systems that a re included in most building envelope systems. Building envelope damag e can cause considerable economic losses due to operational disruption s for extended periods following an earthquake. Furthermore, glazing s ystem structural failures are potentially hazardous to both building o ccupants and pedestrians. In this paper a systematic analytical study of the effect of the SOOE component of the 1940 Fl Centro earthquake o n the response of a one-storey glass and aluminum shop-front wall syst em is presented. The seismic response of a one-storey commercial build ing comprised of three reinforced masonry walls, a glass and aluminum shop-front wall system, and a steel bar joist metal deck roof system w as determined using the ABAQUS and SAP 90 finite element packages. In this study, the roof was considered incapable of transferring lateral forces to the walls and therefore its stiffness was ignored. Significa nt differences in the natural frequencies obtained from the two models were observed. These differences can be traced to different elements, different number of elements, different number of concentrated mass a nd nonstructural mass distribution, and variations in the number of su pports used in the two models. For the Fl Centro ground motions perpen dicular to the plane of the shop-front wall, displacements and drifts calculated by the ABACUS and SAP 90 models differed considerably. This variation was probably due to modelling differences in the front stee l frame. For Fl Centro ground motions parallel to the plane of the sho p-front wall, displacements and drifts calculated by the ABAQUS and SA P 90 models were in much better agreement. It should be noted that for testing architectural glass the inplane drifts are more important. Ty pical values of inplane displacement reached 2.0% of the overall build ing height of 6.10 m, while the drifts reached 2.8% of the 1.83 m glaz ing opening. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.