This study investigates the structural behavior of bahareque earth walls, a traditional construction system commonly used in rural areas of northern South America. Bahareque (wattle and daub) walls, consisting of guadua (a bamboo-like material) or wooden frames filled with soil mixes, have demonstrated considerable resilience in seismic zones due to their lightweight and flexible nature. Despite their widespread use in these communities, limited scientific data exist on their seismic performance under in-plane pseudo-static horizontal loading. This research addresses this gap by experimentally evaluating the seismic behavior of five wall models with different combinations of guadua, wood, and earth filling materials. The methodology included four main phases, namely field visits to document traditional construction techniques, material characterization, prototype testing under pseudo-static loads, and an analysis of mechanical behavior. Key material properties, including compressive strength and Young’s modulus, were determined, alongside the mechanical and physical properties of the infill material, which incorporated natural fibers. Pseudo-static tests were conducted on five wall prototypes, featuring various configurations of guadua and wood frameworks, both with and without soil infill. The walls were subjected to horizontal in-plane loads to assess their deformation capacity, energy dissipation, and failure mechanisms. The results indicated that walls with soil mixture infill—specifically the GSHS (guadua frame with horizontal guadua strips and soil mixture infill) and TSHS (wood frame with horizontal guadua strips and soil mixture infill) configurations—demonstrated the best seismic performance, with maximum displacements reaching up to 166 mm and strengths ranging from 6.4 to 8.4 kN. The study concludes that bahareque walls, particularly those incorporating soil mixes and horizontal guadua strips, exhibit high resilience under seismic conditions and provide a sustainable construction alternative for rural regions. The scope of this study is limited by the exclusion of dynamic seismic simulations, which could offer additional insights into the behavior of bahareque walls under real earthquake conditions. The novelty of this research lies in the direct evaluation of the seismic performance of traditional bahareque configurations, specifically comparing walls constructed with guadua and wooden frameworks, while emphasizing the critical role of soil infill and guadua strips in structural performance.

Dams are a type of civil infrastructure that can directly impact people’s well-being, as their function is energy production, flood control, or water supply. Therefore, it is worth generating strategies to assess its current condition, since structural changes may occur during its useful life. One highly effective approach for evaluating the structural integrity of dams involves monitoring alterations in modal parameters. This method enables the identification of abnormal changes that may arise from structural degradation. Numerous studies have revealed the strong influence of environmental factors on modal parameters, resulting in variations unrelated to structural damage. This paper investigates the effects of environmental factors such as upstream water level and air temperature on the temporal evolution of the identified modal parameters of a hydroelectric dam’s hollow-gravity concrete block. Modal identification is performed through an automatic procedure of estimating modal parameters to 30-min acceleration time series over 3 years of operation. Correlation analysis reveals a distinct relationship between the identified modal parameters and environmental factors. Changes in air temperature exhibit a direct proportional impact on natural frequencies, while fluctuations of the upstream level have an inverse effect. Furthermore, a time lag was observed in the natural frequencies concerning air temperature. Multiple linear regressions were fitted to mitigate the induced effects, incorporating as predictors the upstream water level and the averages of air temperature segments measured prior to the predicted frequency. A reduction in variability of more than 50% was achieved in an out-of-sample 8-month period for the modes linked to the natural frequencies most influenced by environmental factors.

The energy dissipation capacity (EDC) of most current configurations of yielding steel dampers is susceptible to be improved by applying optimization concepts. Thus, this study proposes a methodology to enhance the EDC of a slotted hollow cylinder steel (HCS) damper under a cyclic displacement protocol while keeping the same quantity of material via shape optimization. The simulated annealing algorithm was selected for solving the optimization problem as it uses only one candidate solution per iteration, reducing the computational cost associated with the EDC computation. In addition, the finite element software ABAQUS is used to model the behavior of the steel damper under cyclic loads. A code is elaborated using the Python programming language for the optimization process, containing the instructions to be executed in ABAQUS. Five slot configurations were proposed for the initial damper to determine the effect of the initial solution on the optimized HCS damper. The results show that the proposed optimization process obtains optimized models with stable hysteretic behavior and a significantly higher energy dissipation capacity than the initial models. The optimal configuration presented an EDC of 5543 J, 16% higher than the HCS damper without slots and with the same material quantity. The material is mainly located parallel to the beam, simulating two 2D shear steel plates. The difference in EDC with other optimized configurations reaches 955 J, indicating the dependence of the solution on the initial damper configuration. In addition, the difference in the optimized damper topologies proves the multi-modality characteristic of the problem. The proposed algorithm is easy to implement in a computer and reaches the optimal solution with less than 50 iterations.