Preliminary interpretation of shaking-table response of a full-scale 3-storey building composed of thin reinforced concrete sandwich walls

• Few researches on RC sandwich panels are available in literature.
• Seismic tests on a 3-storey building made of RC sandwich panels are described.
• The prototype is designed based on results of previous pseudo-static cyclic tests.
• The prototype is subjected to an increasing PGA up to 1.2g.
• Limited damages (few cracks) are observed after the most severe seismic tests.

In the last few decades, the use of cast in situ reinforced concrete sandwich panels for the construction of low- to mid-rise buildings has become more and more widespread due to several interesting properties of this construction technique, such as fast construction and high thermal and acoustic performances. Nonetheless the level of knowledge of the structural behavior of systems made of squat reinforced concrete sandwich panels is still not so consolidated, especially with reference to the seismic response, due to the lack of experimental studies. In recent years, while various experimental tests have been conducted on single panels aimed at assessing their seismic capacity, only few tests have been carried out on more complex structural systems. In this paper, the experimental results of a series of shaking-table tests performed on a full-scale 3-storey building are presented in detail. The main goal is to give to the scientific community the possibility of develop independent interpretation of these experimental results. An in-depth interpretation of the discrepancies between the analytical predictions and the experimental results is beyond the objective of this paper and is still under development. Nonetheless, preliminary interpretations indicate that both the stiffness and the strength of the building under dynamic excitation appear quite superior with respect to those expected from the results of previous pseudo-static cyclic tests conducted on simple specimens.