Seismic demand on Power Actuated Fasteners (PAF) under in-plane loading of drywall partitions: an approach

Non-structural architectural components often suffer from significant seismic damage, and they can affect the seismic response of structural systems. As a result, the demand for non-structural architectural components specifically qualified against seismic actions becomes bigger and bigger. In this context, the seismic performance evaluation of drywall partitions plays a key role. It is well known that the in-plane seismic behaviour of drywall partitions is characterised by a displacement-sensitive response, and many investigations were done on this topic. Available studies often focus on the global seismic behaviour of drywall partitions, neglecting the behaviour and impact of fasteners connecting drywalls to supporting elements. However, guidelines for the seismic qualification of typically used redundant light duty fasteners, including Power Actuated Fasteners or plastic anchors, are not available. The main objective of the study presented in this paper is the evaluation of the seismic demand on fasteners connecting drywalls to supporting elements under in-plane cyclic loading. In particular, the seismic displacement demand on Power Actuated Fasteners (PAF) is obtained through quasi-static in-plane cyclic tests on full-scale drywall partitions. An available test setup at the University of Naples has been used for this purpose and a specific task has been devoted to study the optimal instrumentation layout to allow to capture the significant measurements on PAFs. A summary of the literature review and goals of the study, together with the description of experimental program, prototypes, test set up, loading protocol, instrumentation layout and preliminary results are described in this paper.