PRELIMINARY RESULTS OF A SHAKING TABLE TESTS ON A 3-STOREY BUILDING REALIZED WITH CAST IN PLACE SANDWICH SQUAT CONCRETE WALLS

Structural systems composed of cast in place sandwich squat concrete walls, which make use of a lightweight material (for example polystyrene) as a support for the concrete, are widely used for construction in non seismic areas or in areas of low seismicity, and appreciated for their limited constructions costs, limited installation times, great constructions flexibility and high energy and acoustic efficiency. If these cast-in-place squat concrete walls are assembled with appropriate connections, a cellular/box behavior of the structural system is obtained which leads to high strength resources (which allows not to use the post-elastic behavior and the ductility resources) and high torsional stiffness. In recent years, from an exhaustive experimental campaign it has been possible to obtain the structural performances of single panels composed of cast-in-place sandwich squat concrete walls. A series of shaking table tests have been carried out at the EUCENTRE in Pavia. The structural specimen which has been tested is a full-scale 3- storey structural system composed of cast-in-place squat sandwich concrete walls characterized by 5.50 × 4.10 meters in plan and 8.25meters in height. Shaking table tests have been developed to validate the theoretically and partially-experimentally anticipated (through cyclic tests under horizontal loads) good seismic behavior of cellular structures composed of cast in place squat sandwich concrete walls.