FUNDAMENTAL STUDY ON EARTHQUAKE-PROOF CEILINGS FOR ESTIMATION NECESSARY NUMBER OF BRACES FROM DISPLACEMENT CRITERA

Abstract

 In this paper, the authors have proposed a method to determine the necessary number of the braces for the ceiling area from the specified displacement criterion. When the ceiling can be regarded as a linear single degree of freedom system, the fundamental period of the ceiling is the design parameter to control the maximum displacement for the given design response spectrum, and the target fundamental period can be determined for the specified displacement criterion. When the ceiling is regarded as a nonlinear system, the necessary number of the braces can be estimated based on the relationship between the supporting area for a set of the brace and the maximum earthquake displacement of the ceiling. The supporting area for a set of the specified brace can be determined by the story number of the building, the floor number of the ceiling and the displacement criterion. The validity of the proposed method is verified by the time-history analysis by using the observed seismic records of the 2011 Tohoku Pacific Earthquake.