Cold‐formed steel‐framed gypsum partition walls (hereinafter referred to as partition walls) sustain the seismic damage induced by small story drifts. The impacts on the functional deterioration and monetary loss of buildings are enhanced in earthquake events where structural damages are limited. Although the boundaries of partition walls vary by location in a building structure, the existing studies assume a typical partition wall surrounded by a frame consisting of columns and girders. In particular, the vertical boundary members vary from a column, stud column, and wall panel. Our present work investigates the influence of the boundaries on seismic damage and fragility assessment of partition walls using an experimental dataset of cold‐formed steel‐framed gypsum partition walls with various boundaries obtained at an E‐Defense shake table on a four‐story steel frame. A damage mechanism model considering the deformation and rigid body motion of the partition walls and boundaries suitably explains the observed damage variations and underlying mechanisms. This study also presents the non‐negligible impact of boundaries on the fragility and expected repair time and cost model of the partition walls. The presented results are critical in providing references for the layout of partition walls, damage predictions, construction improvements, and repair strategy.

This paper presents seismic damage to continuous ceiling systems and the impact of damage on functionality in the hospital specimen tested at the E-Defense shaking table. The specimen had four ceiling systems with different peripheral constraint conditions, coverage areas, suspended lengths, and ceiling panel materials. The test results demonstrate that the continuous ceiling system is less susceptible to collapse than the lay-in ceiling system. However, medical facilities require maintaining functionality after earthquakes, and the consequence of damage as functional deterioration needs discussion. The twoelevation ceiling system across two rooms with different ceiling heights sustains severe damage at the rise-up part and the partition wall separating the rooms.The damage becomes severe when the ceilings at different heights vibrate at separate frequencies. The results highlight the enhancement of the lateral stiffness of the suspended ceiling at the rise-up part, such as by adding bracing bars. In the case of long-duration shakings assumed for far mega-earthquakes, damage accumulates with repeated loadings, and the functional loss by the damage becomes intense. This observation indicates that peak-related parameters (peak floor acceleration or peak floor velocity) do not comprehensively reflect the degree of damage in ceiling systems. The proposed functionality loss matrix highlights that the damage to the ceiling harms the aseptic environment for key medical rooms, especially for the cleanroom with extremely strict requirements on the air environment.