Despite the widespread use of light-frame timber construction in residential building, wood design courses are typically offered to graduate students and focus on member-level calculations for gravity and lateral systems per the National Design Specification (NDS) for Wood Construction. In years prior, the 10-week advanced undergraduate class described in this paper exposed students through a system-level perspective through a group design project of a multi-story, mixed-use wood building located in a seismic region. A significant course modification in Fall 2019 and 2020 involved the two class sections constructing and testing large-scale wood shear walls representing a one-story segment of a wall present in their multi-story building project: (i) segmented and (ii) force transfer around openings (FTAO) shear walls. The stages of each shear wall experiment included: design calculations and drawings, fabrication of wall specimens, experimental test set-up, conduct of test, and analysis of data.
This new activity exposed students to additional technical concerns related to constructability and seismic performance of shear walls. Also, it promoted development of skills in project management and teamwork. Feedback collected via surveys of the students indicated that the addition of the timber shear wall experiment allowed students to physically comprehend how these structural components are assembled and behave under loading.
Taylor Cardinale recently received his B.S. in Architectural Engineering at California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo, and is continuing graduate studies there with a research focus on the earthquake performance of timber structural walls. After graduation from the program, he hopes to enter into industry as a structural designer and pursue licensure.
Anahid Behrouzi is an assistant professor of architectural engineering at California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo. She has been involved with STEM education beginning in 2003 as a volunteer and summer instructor with the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science. She has been engaged with undergraduate/graduate course delivery in the topic areas of engineering problem-solving, structural engineering, and reinforced concrete design at North Carolina State University (2008-2011), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2012-2015), Tufts University (2015-2016), and Cal Poly - SLO (2016-present). She has a BS in civil engineering and BA in Spanish language & literature from North Carolina State University, and a MS/PhD in civil engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
John Lawson is Professor in Architectural Engineering at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, where he primarily teaches structural design courses to undergraduates. He obtained his Bachelors of Science in Architectural Engineering from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo, and his Masters of Science in Structural Engineering from Stanford University. He is a licensed Professional Engineer and Structural Engineer in California and Arizona with over 25 years of design experience.
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