Shaking table tests of a two-storey log house

Abstract

This paper presents the findings of an experimental campaign that was conducted to investigate the seismic behaviour of log houses. A two-storey log house designed by the Portuguese company Rusticasa® was subjected to a series of shaking table tests at the National Laboratory for Civil Engineering in Lisbon, Portugal. The paper contains the description of the geometry and construction of the house and all the aspects related to the testing procedure, namely the pre-design, the set-up, instrumentation and the testing process itself. The shaking table tests were carried out with a scaled spectrum of the Montenegro (1979) earthquake, at increasing levels of peak ground accelerations, starting from 0·07g, moving on to 0·28g and finally 0·5g. The log house did not suffer any major damage and remained in good working condition throughout the entire process. The preliminary analysis of the overall behaviour of the log house has also been discussed.