Seismic performance of vertical strut and lateral brace suspended continuous-plasterboard ceiling system with all edges free in the plane of ceiling

Suspended ceilings are critical nonstructural elements, and their seismic damage in buildings highlighted the incompatibility between the design and performance of structural and nonstructural elements. In order to study the performance of less researched continuous-plasterboard ceilings, shake table testing was conducted on a ceiling system vertically supported at grid ends with free edges in its plane and suspended by vertical struts and lateral braces. The system had a clearance of 20 mm at the grid ends to accommodate ceiling movements. The ceiling performed satisfactorily for floor accelerations ranging from 0.2 g to 1.4 g without any visible damage. However, the ceiling was slightly rotated and lightly damaged at its perimeter for an extreme dynamic loading of sinusoidal excitation at its natural frequencies. In addition, the experimental performance of the ceiling was numerically validated using nonlinear and linearized responses of sub-assemblage test data of critical components and connections. It was observed that the developed numerical models can be used to predict the behavior of such ceiling systems as an alternative to evaluation by shake table testing.