Nowadays, Portugal faces a serious housing affordability crisis as the cost of residential buildings has been increasing over the years and there are few construction companies with a small working force team to answer to Portuguese housing needs. A form of standardized construction associated with a faster construction time, better quality of structural elements and the promotion of material recycling seems a good alternative to fight this issue. Nonetheless, prefabrication has not been developed for seismic regions, making the investigation of its seismic response essential to guarantee a safe and reliable structure.

This dissertation aims to present a study concerning the seismic behaviour of a multifamily prefabricated concrete building. The building was comprised of a wall-based structural system with reinforcing bars used for the connections between structural elements. First, the seismic vulnerability assessment was performed using three types of analyses, namely modal, linear elastic (response spectrum) and nonlinear pushover analysis. After assessing the seismic vulnerability of the case study, it was performed a parametric study in which the following variables were analysed: wall thickness, concrete compressive strength, connection diameter and number of connections.

In conclusion, both edge walls do not show the same drift difference between the pushovers and response spectrum analysis. Also, the modification of the wall thickness and compressive strength did not influence the seismic behaviour of a precast modular structure in comparison with the connection rebar and the quantity of connections. Finally, the behaviour coefficient attained was closer to the defined in the Eurocode 8.