Experimental investigation on some influencing factors of the lateral resistant behavior of wood infill walls in traditional timber frames

Timber frames with wood infill walls are common lateral load resisting systems in traditional timber structures. There has been much research on timber frames with different infill types, which confirmed the crucial role of infill walls on the seismic response of frames. However, the influencing factors of the lateral performance of wood infill walls are less understood. Monotonic tests were conducted on four full-scale wood-infilled frames commonly used in Chinese traditional buildings and nine panel-to-panel joints assembled with bamboo dowels. Focus was given to initial gaps between walls and frames, panel-to-panel shear connectors, out-of-plane performance of panels, and beam deformation, to investigate the influencing mechanism of these factors on the lateral response of wood infill walls. Results indicate that initial gaps between panels and beams directly affect when infill walls make actual contributions to the lateral performance of frames. Bamboo dowels connected between panels change the kinematic modes of wood infill walls, making them exhibit certain resistance in the early stage without the impact of initial gaps. Obvious out-of-plane deformation of panels was only observed after the drift ratio of 1/30 and the induced strength reduction is estimated below 8 % in this study, which is considered to have a limited weakening effect on the primary structural behaviors of wood infill walls. The beam deflection of wood infilled frame was measured up to 10.1 mm, which is estimated to cause a strength reduction of 45.8 % in the longer-span frame. It is noted that the potential coupling effect of these factors needs further research in the future.