Pali, Tatiana (2016) SEISMIC DESIGN AND EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON NON-STRUCTURAL LIGHTWEIGHT STEEL DRYWALL BUILDING COMPONENTS. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Recent earthquakes highlighted the high vulnerability of non-structural building components to relatively low seismic intensity levels. Their seismic damage could involve substantial economic losses, limit functionality interruption of the most affected buildings and pose a significant hazard to human life. Nevertheless, in the last decades, the study on the seismic response of non-structural building components has received less attention than the research addressed on the primary structural systems, by leading to a lack of specific design provisions for these systems. These considerations highlight that the development of protection measures aimed to reduce the seismic risks and to manage the vulnerabilities of the non-structural building components is becoming one of the most critical issues of the current seismic design. The importance of a rational concept of non-structural building components has also been recognized in the developments of modern seismic regulations, through the introduction of specific design requirements in terms of strength and deformation for these elements. However, the knowledge of their seismic performance is still poorly understood. Since the ceiling-partition walls systems represent a significant investment in the construction market, the current trend of the construction sector aims to the development and promotion of innovative solutions also in the field of non-structural applications. In this framework, lightweight steel drywall building components represent a valid alternative to traditional non-structural systems in seismic areas, by guaranteed a good seismic behaviour with respect to damage limit states mainly thanks to their lightness and low stiffness. However, since the behaviour of non-structural lightweight steel drywall building components cannot be easily simulated with traditional analysis methods, the experimental characterization is an effective procedure. For these reasons, an important collaboration between an industrial company and the University of Naples Federico II was established over the last few years. The main objective of the research is to investigate the seismic performance of non-structural lightweight steel drywall building components, also considering the design requirements provided in the modern seismic code for non-structural elements. The main aim of this dissertation is to give a contribution to the investigation of the seismic performance of lightweight steel gypsum board partition walls and their interaction with other non-structural and structural components, i.e. exterior walls and surrounding structural elements. In particular, two main objectives are pursued in this work: the study of the seismic behaviour of drywall partition walls, in terms of global response, by means of full-scale out-of-plane and in-plane experimental tests; and the study of local behaviour, by means of tests on main material and components, for understanding their influence on the wall global seismic response. Results obtained by material, component and connection tests will be useful for characterizing the local mechanical behaviour of the investigated systems and for predicting their global seismic response through suitable numerical studies. Furthermore, the experimental assessment of the wall global seismic response will provide seismic design criteria by testing to be compared with the design requirements provided in the European code.

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