Experimental seismic fragility assessment of light gauge steel studded gypsum partition walls

Partition wall subsystems constitute a significant portion of the total investment in building infrastructure. Past earthquakes have demonstrated that damage to these nonstructural subsystems can cause substantial earthquake losses and degrade the overall functionality of buildings. Nevertheless, the data obtained from field observations, previous experimentations, and numerical simulations are insufficient to fully characterize their mechanical response under seismic actions and to develop effective solutions to improve their seismic performance. As part of the NEES Nonstructural Grand Challenge Project entitled: Simulation of the Seismic Performance of Nonstructural Systems, a comprehensive experimental program evaluated the seismic performance of light gage steel studded gypsum partition walls. Fifty partition wall specimens, corresponding to twenty two different wall configurations, were constructed following standard construction techniques. Quasi-static and dynamic tests were carried out to assess the in-plane and out-of-plane seismic performance of the walls under both story drifts and floor accelerations. This paper describes the failure mechanisms observed in the walls and develops, based on the methodology developed by the ATC-58 Project, a seismic fragility database for gypsum partition walls.