The paper focuses on the seismic response of “Blockhaus” shear walls. The typical “Blockhaus” systems consists in a series of timber structural elements interacting together by means of traditional and ancient connections based on the effectiveness of carvings and contacts of multiple surfaces. In them, the presence of metallic connectors is minimized. Native of forested areas (North America, Scandinavia, Russia), “Blockhaus” system is widely used in daily practice for the construction of wooden houses in the Italian Alpine region, Switzerland, Austria, but also in other regions associated to high seismic hazard. As a result, the seismic characterization of this construction typology represents a topic of great interest for scientists and designers.

In this context, the paper presents the experimental results obtained by monotonic and cyclical tests recently performed on a typical shear wall used in the realization of “Blockhaus” buildings. As shown, when “Blockhaus” shear walls are affected by in-plane lateral loads, the adopted timber-timber connections ensure the presence of a significant term of elasticity and deformability in the structural system, and enable the reaching of extremely large displacements.

Simultaneously, a three-dimensional finite-element model is developed with the ABAQUS/Standard software, to predict the response of the examined shear walls and to take into account the complex phenomena of interaction between multiple surfaces in contact. As shown, several factors can affect the results of numerical simulations, as for example the presence of possible geometrical imperfections, the contribution of friction phenomena, the mechanical properties of timber, the interaction between seismic lateral forces and vertical permanent loads.

Finally, the possible beneficial structural effects of additional metallic components on the cyclical response of “Blockhaus” shear walls are presented.