LINEAR DYNAMICS OF PRECAST VERTICAL PANELS CLADDING INDUSTRIAL FRAMES UNDER EARTHQUAKE ACTION

The dynamic interaction of heavy vertical cladding panels with single-storey precast industrial frame structures plays a relevant role upon the generation of seismic actions in the connection devices out of the plane of the panels. Nevertheless, the current design approaches consider the panels as “non-structural members” and the forces at the connections are evaluated with approximate expressions available in the literature and mainly conceived for suspended masses. This paper, starting from a rigorous definition of the problem, highlights a minimal set of parameters that control the linear dynamics of the system and presents a novel analytical solution for the evaluation of the system response under seismic excitation. This task is indeed complex due to the peculiar kinematics of the panel and to the different accelerations imparted to the panels, at the same time, in foundation and in correspondence of the connection to the frame. Applications of the code expeditive evaluation of the maximum forces at the top and bottom connections of the panel highlight large discrepancy with respect the newly proposed rigorous solution, albeit being on the safe side.