Seismic resistance and design of steel-framed houses

This paper is on the seismic design of steel framed houses and outlines the research activities for evaluating the seismic safety against severe earthquakes. To investigate the safety level directly, seismic response analyses were applied in this study. For the analyses, a hysteresis model under cyclic loading was developed and dynamic vibration tests of real steel houses and shaking table tests of steel framed walls were conducted. Based on these, the response of a typical steel house during large earthquakes was analyzed. The results showed that the maximum story drift angle was about 1/300 rad. These results show that typical steel houses have quite high safety against severe earthquakes encountered in Japan.