Seismic design of mixed CLT/light-frame multi-storey buldings

This paper discusses the seismic design of mixed multi-storey buildings made of both cross-laminated (CLT) and Light-frame timber walls. Nowadays there is a growing demand by architects and designers about the possibility of combining both these widely used structural systems in the construction of multi-storey buildings, especially in earthquake prone areas. However, seismic design codes such as the Eurocode 8 allow the use of structures with different lateral load resisting systems in the same direction only when a more detailed investigation using nonlinear analysis is carried out, which is often too complex and time-consuming for the everyday design practice. In this paper, results from dynamic (time-history) analysis performed on a four storey case-study building with different combinations of CLT and Light-Frame walls are presented, together with a proposal for the assessment of the q-factor of the mixed system.