Seismic evaluation of Romanian traditional buildings with timber frame and mud masonry infills by in-plane static cyclic tests

The Romanian territory has an important seismic potential in Europe, with the Vrancea source. The most destructive seismic events that occurred in Romania in the 20th century (November 10, 1940 and March 4, 1977) have revealed a high level of seismic vulnerability of the built environment. An important part of this built environment is represented by historical buildings, including the traditional ones (timber frame and infills from various materials as brick, stone, adobe, etc.). The investigations after seismic events from November 10, 1940 and March 4, 1977, revealed that the traditional buildings did not suffer any or important damages, thus showed their particular seismic behavior. Both the experience after similar seismic events from other countries as Turkey, Haiti, China, Myanmar, etc. and research studies from countries like Portugal, France and Japan, revealed an unexpected good behavior of such of buildings. Therefore, in this paper the results of the static cyclic tests on walls are presented. The test specimens were built according to the findings of the field investigations done on traditional buildings from Romania which are briefly presented hereby. The typology on which this paper focuses is the one found as predominant in the investigated areas (around the Vrancea seismic source).