Yeow, T.Z.MacRae, G.A.Dhakal, RajeshBradley, Brendon2014-06-232014-06-232014Yeow, T.Z., MacRae, G.A., Dhakal, R.P., Bradley, B.A. (2014) Preliminary experimental verification of current content sliding modelling techniques. Auckland, New Zealand: 2014 New Zealand Society for Earthquake Engineering Conference (NZSEE), 21-23 Mar 2014. 8pp.http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9312Most analytical studies focusing on the sliding of building contents usually make an assumption that the friction force-sliding displacement behaviour is elasto-plastic (e.g. friction coefficient remains constant during sliding). This preliminary study uses experimental data to verify if this assumption is reasonable. Shake table tests of a desk on common flooring materials were conducted to investigate the factors influencing friction behaviour, and to observe the behaviour of the contents under sinusoidal motion. Up to a 15% decrease in friction coefficient was observed with either an 80% increase in mass or a 20 times decrease in relative velocity, indicating that the friction coefficient is dependent on these two parameters. A comparison of the experimental and analytical sliding response of the desk under a single sinusoidal loading pattern on carpet flooring was conducted. Results show that the displacement amplitude of a single sliding excursion and the general sliding trend is well approximated using the elasto-plastic assumption. As such, despite the dependence of friction coefficient on sliding mass and velocity, the elasto-plastic behaviour assumption appears to be reasonable for the sinusoidal loading pattern examined in this paper.enFields of Research::40 - Engineering::4005 - Civil engineering::400506 - Earthquake engineering