Some aspects of testing small‐scale masonry building models on simple earthquake simulators

Abstract The basic aspects of testing small‐scale masonry building models on simple earthquake simulators are discussed. Since the scale effects represent a difficult problem to solve, the overall seismic behaviour of structural systems, and not the behaviour of structulal details, has been studied by testing the reduced‐sized models on a simple earthquake simulator. Accurate results regarding the dynamic behaviour and failure mechanism of the tested structures have been obtained by means of testing the relatively simple, adequately designed small‐scale masonry building models. A simple earthquake simulator capable of simulating the uni‐directional earthquake ground motion has been developed to study the seismic behaviour of masonry building models. Although a multipurpose programmable actuator was used to drive the shaking table, the comparison of the dynamic characteristics of the generated shaking‐table motion and the earthquake acceleration records used for the simulation of seismic loads showed an acceptable degree of correlation between the input and output seismic motion.