SEISMIC CAPACITY OF CLADDING PANEL-TO-STRUCTURE CONNECTION SYSTEMS IN PRECAST BUILDINGS

Recent earthquakes have largely demonstrated that seismic performance of precast buildings, with particular reference to single story precast industrial buildings, highly depends on the dynamic interaction of the main structure with the secondary structure (i.e., precast cladding system) and on the dynamic behaviour of beam/column-to-panel connections. For this reason, buildings Codes require seismic design of the over mentioned connection devices, even if the scientific debate on how to properly define their seismic demand and capacity is still open. Considering the most widespread panel-to-structure connection system, i.e. anchor channel and sliding hammer-head bolt, its seismic behaviour appears to be sensitive to both displacements and accelerations/forces, in the in-plane and out-of-plane direction, respectively. This paper focuses on the experimental results of dynamic tests on full scale precast panel specimens, performed using an advanced facility which is able to simulate in-plane and out-of-plane dynamic actions. The study aims to the definition of multidimensional domains for the definition of seismic capacity of precast panel-to-structure connection devices