Preliminary results of the shake-table testing for the development of a diaphragm seismic design methodology

This paper reports the design, construction, and preliminary results of a three-story precast concrete building built at half scale and tested under input ground motions on the George B. Brown Jr. Network of Earthquake Engineering Simulation's Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table at the University of California, San Diego. This building was tested in support of the development of a diaphragm seismic design methodology project funded by the Precast/Prestressed Concrete Institute, the National Science Foundation, and the Charles Pankow Foundation and developed jointly by the University of Arizona; University of California, San Diego; Lehigh University; and the precast, prestressed concrete industry. The test structure had a rectangular plan and incorporated a pretopped double-tee diaphragm with welded chords, a noncomposite-topped diaphragm on hollow-core units, and a composite-topped diaphragm on double-tee floor units. The unique research opportunity of testing a complete structural system at large scale was exploited to the fullest extent by subjecting the building to 16 significant-input ground motions while 640 sensors dynamically recorded the development of a number of damage-limit states in various elements and connections in the structure.