Shake-table testing of a full-scale clay-URM building with chimneys to near-collapse conditions (LNEC-BUILD-3)

A full-scale building specimen was subjected to unidirectional dynamic tests by applying recorded ground motion signals at the foundation via a shaking table. The building was a generic unreinforced masonry structure made of solid clay bricks, embodying construction details of detached houses in the Groningen region of the Netherlands. It had a typical Dutch gambrel roof with tall gables, a flexible timber floor diaphragm, and two clay-brick chimneys of different free-standing heights. The experiment simulated a series of earthquakes of increasing intensity to assess progressive damage, failure modes, and the ultimate capacity of the structure. The input ground motions were compatible with induced seismicity scenarios for the Groningen gas field of the Netherlands. Random vibration tests were performed between the earthquake simulations to determine the evolution of the dynamic properties of the system at each stage of the experiment. The building specimen was densely instrumented with accelerometers, wire potentiometers, and linear variable displacement transducers that monitored the dynamic response of various structural and non-structural components. The dynamic response characteristics of the building were calculated using the in-house software LNEC-SPA, and the acquired dataset was further analysed using MATLAB.

The shake-table tests were conducted in 2018 at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering (LNEC) facilities in Lisbon, Portugal. They were part of the EUCENTRE Foundation project 'Study of the vulnerability of masonry buildings in Groningen', within the research framework programme on hazard and risk of induced seismicity in the Groningen province, sponsored by the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij BV (NAM). The project was carried out in collaboration with the research group of Masonry Structures from the University of Pavia in Italy.