Direct displacement design of tall cross laminated timber platform buildings with inter-story isolation

Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is a relatively new engineered wood material viable for the tall building construction. Currently, existing multi-story CLT buildings are mostly built in regions with low seismicity. Due to the lightweight nature of the wood material, CLT buildings have a relatively lower seismic force demand and great potential to achieve resilient performance in earthquakes. This study explores the potential use of an inter-story isolation system to achieve seismically resilient performance in platform tall CLT buildings. A generalized Displacement-based Direct Design (DDD) procedure was modified to identify key design parameters of the inter-story isolation system so that the building can achieve pre-selected displacement targets. The proposed design procedure was applied to a 12-story CLT building design example using Los Angeles, CA seismic hazard parameters. The as-designed building performance was validated numerically through nonlinear time history simulations.