Study on the damage mechanism and hysteretic performance of fork column-dougong connection in traditional Chinese multi-story wooden structures

Fork column-dougong connection is an essential part in traditional Chinese multi-story wooden structures and its hysteretic performance is critical to the seismic performance of such structures. In this paper, a full-scale model consisting of a fork column and a dougong was fabricated and subjected to the pseudo-static cyclic load. Two types of damage patterns of the fork column were found and their inherent mechanism were revealed. The deformation features and hysteretic curves were studied and discussed. Results show that the constraint-induced and embedment-induced cracks are the two major damages of the connection, which both makes the cracks of column initiate at the interface with the dougong and propagate upwards. The rotation of the fork column accounts for about 90 % of the loading deformation and the proportion grows with the increase of the loading amplitude. The hysteretic curve of the connection is almost symmetric and each hysteresis loop seems fusiform, while the damping coefficient is slightly smaller compared with dougong alone.