• Proceedings of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.45-52
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• 2001

A series of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls were analytically investigated for a limited version of seismic in-plane performance. For this URM walls were assumed to be an elastic continuum and modeled as isotropic plane stress elements within which the nature of cracking was propagated. Accordingly, cracking mode of behavior in URM was modeled by smeared-crack approach. Total of 70 cases were considered for various parameters such as axial load ratio, aspect ratio and effective section area ratio due to the existence of opening, etc. The analysis results indicated a general tendency in base shear coefficient and deformability of URM walls for these variables.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.277-283
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• 2016

Unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings are known to be highly vulnerable to seismic loadings. Although significant physical variation may exist for URM buildings that fall into a same structural category, a single set of fragility curves is typically used as a representation of the seismic vulnerability of the URM structures. This study investigates the effect of physical variation of URM structures on their seismic performance level. Variables that describe the physical variation of the structure are defined based on the inventory analysis. Seismic behavior of the structures is then monitored by changing the variables to investigate the effect of each variable. The analysis results show that among the variables considered the seismic performance of URM building depends on the variation of the width, the aspect ratio, and the number of story. The need for further research on the modeling of the connections between the walls and diaphragms and the torsional effect is also addressed.

• Magazine of the Korea Concrete Institute
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• v.19 no.5
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• pp.51-57
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• 2007

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.8 no.5 s.39
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• pp.1-14
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• 2004

The seismic behavior of a 1/3-scale model of a two-story unreinforced masonry (URM) structure typically used in constructing low-rise residential buildings in Korea is studied through a shaking table test. The purposes of this study are to investigate seismic behavior and damage patterns of the URM structure that was not engineered against seismic loading and to provide its experimental test results. The test structure was symmetric about the transverse axis but asymmetric to some degrees about longitudinal axis and had a relatively strong diaphragm of concrete slab. The test structure was subjected to a series of differentlevels of earthquake shakings that were applied along the longitudinal direction. The measured dynamic response of the test structure was analyzed in terms of various global parameters (i.e., floor accelerations, base shear, floor displacements and storydrift, and torsional displacements) and correlated with the input table motion. Moreover, different levels of seismic performance were suggested for performance-based design approach. The results of the shaking table test revealed that the shear failure was dominant on a weak side of the 1stfloor while the upper part of the test model remained as a rigid body. Also, it was found that substantial strength and deformation capacity existed after cracking.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.195-215
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• 2016

Rehabilitation of historical unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings is a priority in many parts of the world, since those buildings are a living part of history and a testament of human achievement of the era of their construction. Many of these buildings are still operational; comprising brittle materials with no reinforcements, with spatially distributed mass and stiffness, they are not encompassed by current seismic assessment procedures that have been developed for other structural types. To facilitate the difficult task of selecting a proper rehabilitation strategy - often restricted by international treaties for non-invasiveness and reversibility of the intervention - and given the practical requirements for the buildings' intended reuse, this paper presents a practical procedure for assessment of seismic demands of URM buildings - mainly historical constructions that lack a well-defined diaphragm action. A key ingredient of the method is approximation of the spatial shape of lateral translation, ${\Phi}$, that the building assumes when subjected to a uniform field of lateral acceleration. Using ${\Phi}$ as a 3-D shape function, the dynamic response of the system is evaluated, using the concepts of SDOF approximation of continuous systems. This enables determination of the envelope of the developed deformations and the tendency for deformation and damage localization throughout the examined building for a given design earthquake scenario. Deformation demands are specified in terms of relative drift ratios referring to the in-plane and the out-of-plane seismic response of the building's structural elements. Drift ratio demands are compared with drift capacities associated with predefined performance limits. The accuracy of the introduced procedure is evaluated through (a) comparison of the response profiles with those obtained from detailed time-history dynamic analysis using a suite of ten strong ground motion records, five of which with near-field characteristics, and (b) evaluation of the performance assessment results with observations reported in reconnaissance reports of the field performance of two neoclassical torsionally-sensitive historical buildings, located in Thessaloniki, Greece, which survived a major earthquake in the past.

• Journal of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.1-10
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• 2002

A series of unreinforced masonry(URM) walls were analytically investigated by FEM for a limited version of seismic in-plane performance. For this, URM walls were assumed to be continum and modeled as isotropic plane stress elements, within which the nature of cracking was propogated. Accordingly, behavioral mode of cracking in URM was modeled by smeared-crack approach. Total of 70 cases were considered for various parameters such as axial load ratio, aspect ratio and effective section area ratio due to the existence of opening, etc. The analysis results indicate that these parameters significantly and interactively influence over the ultimate strength of URM walls. Finally, it is suggested that the response modification factor for URM adopted in the current Korean Standard should be validated considering various forms of brittleness and probable failure modes in URM.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.75 no.3
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• pp.295-309
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• 2020

The construction of Reinforced Concrete (R/C) buildings with unreinforced masonry infills is part of the traditional building practice in many countries with regions of high seismicity throughout the world. When these buildings are subjected to seismic motions the presence of masonry infills and especially their configuration can highly influence the seismic damage state. The capability to avoid configurations of masonry infills prone to seismic damage at the stage of initial architectural concept would be significantly definitive in the context of Performance-Based Earthquake Engineering. Along these lines, the present paper investigates the potential of instant prediction of the damage response of R/C buildings with various configurations of masonry infills utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs). To this end, Multilayer Feedforward Perceptron networks are utilized and the problem is formulated as pattern recognition problem. The ANNs' training data-set is created by means of Nonlinear Time History Analyses of 5 R/C buildings with a large number of different masonry infills' distributions, which are subjected to 65 earthquakes. The structural damage is expressed in terms of the Maximum Interstorey Drift Ratio. The most significant conclusion which is extracted is that the ANNs can reliably estimate the influence of masonry infills' configurations on the seismic damage level of R/C buildings incorporating their optimum design.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.149-160
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• 2023

Over the course of the last 4-5 years, India's northeastern region have widely used Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) blocks to construct load-bearing masonry structures. The aim of this investigation is to examine the shear characteristics of AAC masonry triplet assemblage strengthened by using two techniques, i.e., the bead joint (BJ) and the bed-head joint (BHJ) technique. Three unique variations of wire mesh were involved in the strengthening method. Furthermore, three strengthening configurations were used to strengthen each of the three wire mesh variations and the two-strengthening method, i.e. (-), L and (Z) configuration. The unreinforced and reinforced triplet masonry wallets were tested under direct shear test. From the results obtained, the 'BJ'triplet masonry wallets observed an enhanced in shear strength of about 2.23% to 23.33 % whereas the 'BHJ' triplet masonry wallets observed an enhanced in shear strength of about 22.92% to 50.69%. The "BHJ" strengthening method effectively enhance the shear strength of the triplet masonry wallets compared to the "BJ" and the "UR" wallets with an increase in capacity as the wire mesh strength increases. Furthermore, in terms of the strengthening configuration, the (Z) configuration performs better, followed by the (L) and (-) configuration demonstrating the strengthening configuration effectiveness.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 2001.09a
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• pp.399-406
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• 2001

Most unreinforced masonry buildings have a lot of structural faults under the lateral load. Therefore, considering the heavy damage of URM buildings caused by the earthquakes, it may be necessary for the effective seismic code and reinforcing method. This paper describes the research-in-progress on an experiment program fur the investigation of the relatively simple and reliable analytical model to estimate dynamic response of URM buildings and briefly reviews the concept of the reinforcement fur damaged URM buildings.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.83 no.6
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• pp.799-810
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• 2022

This study investigated the effect of the strengthening efficiency of unbonded steel-bar truss system on the out-of-plane behavior of perforated masonry walls. Four full-scale unreinforced masonry (URM) walls with two different planes were prepared using the unbonded steel-bar truss system and a URM walls without strengthening. All masonry walls were tested under constant axial and cyclic lateral loads. The obtained test results indicated that the pinching effect in the out-plane behavior of masonry walls tends to decrease in the in- and out-of-plane strengthened URM walls using the unbonded steel-bar truss system with the higher prestressing force ratio (R_p) of vertical reinforcing bars in the unbonded steel-bar truss system, regardless of the perforated type of the masonry wall. Consequently, the highest maximum shear resistance and cumulative dissipated energy at peak load in the post-peak behavior were observed in the in- and out-plane strengthened URM walls with the highest R_p values, which are 2.7 and 6.0 times higher than those of URM. In particular, the strengthening efficiency of the unbonded steel-bar truss system was primarily attributed to the vertical prestressed steel-bars rather than the diagonal steel-bars, which indicates that the strains in the vertical prestressed steel-bars at the peak load were approximately 1.6 times higher than those in the diagonal steel-bars.