Thèse de Hala Damerji

Earth construction is widely used in a lot of developing countries where they still are the main technique of construction despite the dominance of modern construction techniques in urban areas. Studying the seismic vulnerability of such structures is then crucial since many of them are located in highly active seismic zones. Therefore, this study focused on analyzing the behavior of earth constructions, more specifically the adobe walls, thanks to numerical and experimental methods.

Two experimental tests were developed for this study. The first one is a shake table which permits to do dynamic tests by reproducing real seismic events. An important effort was carried out in order to enhance the control of the table and to check its performance via signal analysis. Then, a steel structure prototype was used to check the behavior of the table with additional payload. The second test is a pseudo dynamic test, known as a hybrid test that combines numerical and experimental aspects. The same steel prototype was used to validate the test workability. Then, the feedbacks of both experiments were compared to the results of numerical simulations.

The last part of the work was dedicated to the vulnerability analysis of adobe walls under seismic loading. A numerical model based on previous quasi-static tests on two earth masonry walls was created in Abaqus. It was followed by a parametrical study to assess the effect of some material parameters on the wall behavior. Then a dynamic experimental test was carried out on an adobe wall using the shake table. The experimental results were then compared to numerical ones that were obtained based on material characteristics extracted from different experimental tests on the adobe and the mortar, and done at material scale. Dynamic tests performed on the adobe wall and the numerical work allowed to predict the wall response and to study the damage patterns. Additional works to enhance the experimental apparatus performance as well as the numerical models will be done in order to optimize the tools for seismic analysis that were developed in this study.