Shake table tests on full-scale Confined Stone Walls

Seismic and climatic hazards have a huge impact on the lives of the affected populations both because of the immediate damages and because of the reconstruction costs and times. Moreover, since a large number of people still live today in precarious conditions and DO not have access to modern expensive construction technologies, new low-cost and resilient construction techniques are needed to face this growing issue. Very recently the International Solidarity Association Architecture & Développement (A&D) developed an innovative technology, called Confined Stone Walls (CSW), which is based on the construction of masonry houses by means of steel wire gabion gages and rocks. Such a technique is intended to mitigate the deficit of skills and means of fragile and poorly industrialized populations, in order to build affordable housing or rebuild reliable houses after environmental disasters. In order to define a design strategy and optimize the construction processes of CSW houses, studies have been conducted both theoretically and experimentally. In this paper an experimental campaign conducted on several CSW configurations is reported. Dynamic tests have been carried out at the Experimental Dynamic Laboratory of the L.E.D.A. Research Institute at the University of Enna Kore by means of a large shaking table system. The experimental campaign has been designed in order to study the behaviour of isolated walls with several geometries and scales under low level random excitations and seismic excitations with increasing peak acceleration. The dynamic response of the CSW specimens under investigation has been acquired by means of classic acceleration sensors and also by two accurate 3D survey techniques, range and image-based, carried out by the Survey and Representation Laboratory of the University of Enna Kore. Results of the campaign confirmed that the proposed technology is effective and promising for the assessment of reliable and resilient anti-seismic low cost houses.