Structures such as unreinforced masonry walls, soft-storey buildings, gravity structures and
components which include free-standing objects are well known to be non-ductile and yet
they are commonly found in regions of low-moderate seismicity. Potential significant
degradation in strength in these structural systems in projected earthquake scenarios has been
a cause for concern. Shaking table experiments undertaken recently by the authors revealed
very interesting phenomena with the behaviour of the (“non-ductile”) free-standing objects in
an earthquake. Vulnerability to overturning is shown not to be sensitive to the height of the
object nor its aspect ratio. The trends revealed earlier by the authors based on analytical
modeling have been confirmed experimentally. Importantly, the displacement time histories
predicted by program Rowmanry and Romain are shown to be very consistent with
recordings from the shaking table experiments