Ten-Story Mass Timber TallWood Prepares for a Shake Up

The TallWood Project is the latest mass timber construction project being erected on the West Coast. While it has numerous features of a high-performance building, including windows and doors provided by Innotech Windows + Doors, no one will be moving into the 10-story, cross laminated timber (CLT) building. Instead, TallWood is being erected at the Natural Hazards Engineering Research Infrastructure (NHERI) facility at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), and it will be tested for seismic resiliency at the facility’s earthquake simulator, which is one of the largest in the world.

The upcoming tests, which are scheduled at the end of April, will expand on previous experiments at the UCSD facility involving a low-rise, two-story structure conducted in 2017. The two-story structure was tested on a shake table that simulated seismic activity in two dimensional (side to side motion). It will be the tallest wood structure put to a full-scale seismic test, and the data that this test will yield will be unprecedented.

The shaking motion of the 10-story test will involve three dimensions, thereby providing more realistic shaking motions to replicate an earthquake more accurately. The table will accelerate to produce forces of at least 1g and produce forces of up to 3gs at the top of the building, which is what astronauts endure during liftoff.

The upcoming tests will also simulate a range of earthquake magnitudes on the Richter scale, from magnitude 4 to magnitude 8. For reference, individuals on the West Coast may experience multiple magnitude 4 earthquakes per year without really noticing them. An earthquake that reaches magnitude 8 on the Richter scale can be extremely destructive and deadly. For reference, the magnitude of the earthquake that decimated multiple cities in Turkey and Syria in February 2023 was 7.8 on the Richter scale.

Funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and US Forest Service, the testing will provide better information about the seismic resiliency of mass timber. Seismic resiliency is essential in areas that see significant seismic activity not only to keep those inside safe but to ensure that the building can quickly recover its function following an earthquake. The 10-storey NHERI TallWood Project will first validate that the performance of mass timber structures meets the design specifications and then quantify the performance of select non-structural components, including windows and doors. The non-structural components will be reviewed in the context of overall safety, functional recovery and other resiliency objectives.

Windows and doors have an important role in seismic resiliency as they contribute greatly to the safety and function of a building. A total failure of the windows and doors would not only make the building unsafe during an earthquake, but it would also make the building unusable until the windows and doors were replaced.

Innotech is built on a passion for performance and is no stranger to vigorous performance testing. Over the last two decades, Innotech has continually refined its high-performance windows and doors to exceed increasingly high code-based and voluntary building standards, including thermal, air, water, acoustical, structural, and overall durability. Several lines of Innotech’s windows have received Passive House Institute and Phius certification.

“Performance is multi-dimensional. It’s also continuously evolving,” says Troy Imbery, President of Innotech Windows + Doors. “Our primary geographic market is a high-seismic region. The opportunity to learn how our products perform during and after a major earthquake is not only the right thing to do, but also falls in-line with our commitment to manufacturer long-lasting products.”

The durability of building products and the overall building is an important measure of sustainability. “A true measure of durability is not simply whether a home or building still exists in 20, 40 or even 80 years,” continues Imbery. “Durability is whether the home or building successfully maintains the level of performance it was designed to achieve at the time that it was built.”

The first shake of the NHERI TallWood Project is tentatively scheduled to take place later this month and will begin a four-week testing program. For more information on the NHERI TallWood Project, visit http://nheritallwood.mines.edu/ or watch the live feed http://nees.ucsd.edu/video/.

All images courtesy of Innotech Windows + Doors.