Half-timbered buildings represent an important historical heritage in many countries. They are diffused in
various regions for different reasons, among which for being able to resist seismic actions.
Despite the great popularity of this kind of structures, few studies are available on their global behaviour or on
that of their single structural elements. The aim of this paper is to study the behaviour under cyclic loading of
traditional half-timbered walls, with connections, materials and elements dimensions encountered in existing
buildings.
Cyclic tests have been performed in order to evaluate the performance of distinct traditional retrofitting
techniques of the connections, namely: (1) increasing the number of nails at the connection; (2) use of steel bolts;
(3) use of steel plates. The idea is to compare the performance in terms of hysteresis loops and the assessment of
the improvements of the cyclic response in terms of ductility and energy dissipation
