Construction technology of timber-frame houses resistant to dynamic loads – study on models of exterior walls

The aim of this paper is to show the numeric representation of experimental studies concerning the behaviour of exterior wall models of a timber-frame house under harmonic loading. A single wall model according to traditional technology of timber-frame house walls (filling with mineral wool) was tested. The analysis was conducted for the following frequencies: 0.5 Hz, 1.0 Hz, 2.0 Hz and 5.0 Hz for various values of the specified displacement. A number of hysteresis loops were obtained for each of the tests. Based on them, the damping ratio as well as stiffness were calculated. The skeleton model filled with mineral wool (traditional technology) experienced serious damage under larger displacements. The results of the study have been used to propose a numerical model of wall filled with mineral wool. The proposed numerical model is consistent with the results for the values obtained during the experimental study, which proves the correctness of the adopted solution.