Shaking table tests on dome‐roof adobe houses

This paper presents the results of an experimental work in order to evaluate the performance of a novel proposed retrofitting technique on a typical dome‐roof adobe building by shaking table tests. For this purpose, two specimens, scaled 2:3, were subjected to a total of nine shaking table tests. The unretrofitted specimen, constructed by common practice, is designed to evaluate seismic performance and vulnerability of dome‐roof adobe houses. The retrofitted specimen, exactly duplicating the first specimen, is retrofitted based on the results obtained from unretrofitted specimen tests, and the improvement in seismic behavior of the structure is investigated. Zarand earthquake (2005) Chatrood Station is selected as the input ground motion that was applied consecutively at 25, 100, 125, 150 and 175% of the design‐level excitation. At 125% excitation level, the roof of the unretofitted specimen collapsed due to the walls' out‐of‐plane action and imbalanced forces. The retrofitting elements consist of eight horizontal steel rods drilled into the walls, passed through the specimen and bolted on the opposite wall surfaces. To improve walls in‐plane seismic performance, welded steel mesh without using mortar, covered less than half area of walls on the external face of the walls, is used. In addition to strain gauges for recording steel rod responses, several instrumentations including acceleration and displacement transducers are implemented to capture response time histories of different parts of the specimens. The corresponding full‐scaled retrofitted prototype tolerated peak acceleration of 0.62 g almost without any serious damage. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.