Shake Table Tests for the Seismic Assessment of Hollow Brick Internal Partitions

Bidirectional shake table tests are performed on standard hollow brick partitions, subjecting the partitions simultaneously to interstory relative displacements in their own plane and accelerations in the out-of-plane direction. Five couples of accelerograms are selected matching the target response spectrum provided by the U.S. code for nonstructural components (i.e., AC156) in order to investigate a wide range of seismic demand. Three damage states are considered and correlated to an engineering demand parameter, i.e. the interstory drift ratio. The tested specimen exhibits significant damage for 0.3% interstory drift and extensive damage for displacement close to 1.0%. The correlation between the dynamic characteristics of the test setup - in terms of damping ratio and natural frequency - and the recorded damage is evidenced.