Flange Effects of an Unreinforced Masonry Wall Subjected to Pseudo-Static In-Plane Seismic Forces

Abstract eng:
Many unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings in New Zealand can be expected to perform poorly in an earthquake. The construction of such buildings was common in the early part of the 20th Century, but design philosophies focused on gravity loading, with little thought given to the lateral force resistance of brick walls. Consequently many URM buildings form a significant part of both New Zealand’s heritage building stock and that group of buildings which are considered earthquake prone. As part of a programme of research to provide retrofit solutions for upgrading such buildings it was determined that the first task to be completed was the development or adoption of accurate seismic assessment techniques. Towards this aim, testing has been conducted to investigate the seismic in-plane performance of unreinforced masonry walls. Walls were constructed and testing was conducted to investigate the effects of boundary conditions, and in particular the effects of wall flanges. It was found that existing simplified predictive techniques do not accurately take into account the effects of boundary conditions, in particular the influence of perpendicular walls, to the failure mode of in-plane loaded walls. The effects of flange walls reduced the force and displacement capacity of the in-plane loaded wall, and also changed the failure mode from rocking for an unrestrained wall to shear cracking for the flanged wall.

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