Shake table tests on a full-scale timber-frame building with gypsum fibre boards

This paper describes the main outcomes of a shake table test on a full-scale light-timber framed building carried out within the framework of the SERIES project at National Laboratory of Civil Engineering (Lisbon, Portugal) in coordination with the University of Trento (Trento, Italy). The specimen was a single family house with a 7 × 5 m2 footprint and a maximum height of 7.65 m. The walls were sheathed only with gypsum-fibre boards (GFB). The seismic tests were performed by scaling a natural earthquake from 0.07 g up to 0.66 g in two different stages. In the first stage, the building was characterized by its design geometry, whereas in the latter stage, the sheathing panels of five external walls at ground level were removed in order to reduce the racking capacity of the building. Precious and interesting data were found from the experimental results to investigate the seismic capacity of light-frame buildings sheathed with GFB. A comparison between the un-weakened and weakened specimen was also performed.