Assessment of the seismic behaviour of unreinforced: traditional half-timbered walls

Half-timbered buildings represent an important historical heritage in many countries. They are diffused in various regions for different reasons, among which for being able to resist seismic actions. Despite the great popularity of this kind of structures, few studies are available on their global behaviour or on that of their single structural elements. The aim of this paper is to study the behaviour under cyclic loading of traditional half-timbered walls, with connections, materials and elements dimensions encountered in existing buildings. Cyclic tests have been performed in order to evaluate the performance of distinct traditional retrofitting techniques of the connections, namely: (1) increasing the number of nails at the connection; (2) use of steel bolts; (3) use of steel plates. The idea is to compare the performance in terms of hysteresis loops and the assessment of the improvements of the cyclic response in terms of ductility and energy dissipation