Nonlinear seismic response reconstruction and performance assessment of instrumented wood‐frame buildings—Validation using NEESWood Capstone full‐scale tests

The authors present a methodology to reconstruct nonlinear seismic response and assess seismic performance of instrumented wood-frame buildings subjected to earthquakes. The paper proposes the use of a nonlinear model-based state observer that combines global acceleration measurements and a nonlinear structural model of the building to estimate the complete dynamic response including displacements, velocities, accelerations at all degrees of freedom of the model, and internal forces in all structural members. From the estimated dynamic response, engineering demand parameters are obtained and compared with performance-based acceptance criteria to determine post-earthquake building occupancy classification. The methodology is successfully verified and validated using seismic response measurements and photographic records from the 2009 NEESWood Capstone building full-scale tests conducted at the E-Defense facility in Japan.