Ensayos Sismícos en el Laboratorio ELSA de la Comisión Europea

During the last decade, the European Laboratory for Structural Assessment (ELSA) has played a major role in Europe in the execution of seismic tests on large structural models. Most of the tests performed at ELSA have been developed in collaboration with many research centres and have produced results of great value for the validation of several chapters of Eurocode 8. Usually the method applied in those tests is the pseudo-dynamic (PsD) one, which has been continuously improved thanks to the accumulated experience. By means of the PsD method, it is possible to obtain in the laboratory with accuracy the seismic response of large structures in a quasi-static fashion, which avoids many of the problems faced by shaking-table testing. At ELSA, the powerful combination of instruments and software developed within a flexible architecture has allowed to successfully afford the most complicated realistic tests when using substructuring or multi-directional response for example.JRC.G.5-European laboratory for structural assessmen