Seismic response evaluation of non-structural drywall building components: Planning of an experimental campaign

Past earthquakes have shown that the damage to non-structural elements can severely limit the functionality of most affected buildings and cause substantial economic losses. Among the non-structural building components, the ceiling-partition systems represent a large economic investment in construction sector. Nevertheless, their seismic performance is poorly understood, because information and specific guidance are very limited. In the last years, international studies have been conducted on the seismic behaviour of light gage steel stud partition walls (Lee et al. [1], Restrepo and Bersofsky [2], Tasligedik et al. [3], Retamales et al. [4], Magliulo at al. [5]), suspended ceilings (Badillo et al. [6], Magliulo et al. [7], Gilani et al. [8], Soroushian et al. [9],) and partition walls - ceiling systems (Filiatrault et al. [10], McCormick at al. [11]). Since the behaviour of these systems cannot be easily simulated with traditional structural analysis, experimentation is the main way to assess the seismic response. For these reasons, an experimental campaign has been planned at the University of Naples Federico II with the main aim to characterize the seismic response of different Cold-Formed Steel (CFS) partition drywalls and suspended continuous plasterboard ceilings. The current paper presents the research project, in terms of experimental program, prototypes and specifically designed set-up.