Case Study: Design and Construction of Confined Masonry Homes in Indonesia


Abstract eng:
Beginning in Aceh in 2005 after the 2004 Sumatra-Andaman Earthquake and continuing after the earthquakes in West Sumatra and Padang, Build Change, an international non-profit organization, rebuilt confined masonry and timber houses in Indonesia in partnership with local builders, improved the design and construction of houses built by partner organizations, trained builders through intensive, on-the-job training programs, and trained technical high school students about the design and construction of earthquake-resistant houses. Using confined masonry in the reconstruction was an improvement on the existing, commonly preferred systems, rather than an introduction of a new system. Minor modifications to existing design and construction practices were used to ensure these single story houses in Indonesia were affordable, easy to build with local materials, skills and tools, and earthquakeresistant. Despite the fact that confined masonry was already common and locally sustainable in Sumatra, convincing some homeowners, engineers, government officials, and decision makers for donor agencies to build using confined masonry was a formidable challenge. For example, most engineers and decision makers working for funding agencies – both Indonesian and foreign – had never heard of confined masonry and were reluctant to use a system that they were unfamiliar with. The major hurdle was the cost of implementing earthquake-resistant design and construction improvements into the confined masonry practice already present. The improvements Build Change implemented in their Aceh house design added cost, which made it difficult to promote in West Sumatra and Padang because the construction costs there were paid by the homeowners rather than by donor agencies as was the case in Aceh. In many cases there had to be design modifications to make the construction financially viable while still maintaining safety. There were technical challenges as well. While unofficial guidelines for confined masonry construction are available in Indonesia, there were (and still are) not provisions for confined masonry in the Indonesian building codes and the guidelines that are available are prescriptive in nature. Confined masonry provisions in the building codes for other countries could not be directly applied to buildings in Indonesia because the construction standards and practices were different from the research and experience data that the foreign code provisions were developed from. There were also challenges with obtaining good quality building materials and establishing construction quality assurance programs, in particular the latter since inspection of home construction was not common practice in Aceh or West Sumatra. Confined masonry homes that were built to the standards developed by Build Change performed well in subsequent earthquakes in Indonesia relative to those that were not. This has demonstrated the viability of this structural system as a low-cost, locally appropriate solution for single story housing construction when designed and constructed properly. These earthquakes also illustrated how vulnerable houses can be when simple rules and good practices for configuration (wall height and length, gable walls, open terrace frames), connections (between confining elements, between walls and tie columns), and construction quality (materials and workmanship of the masonry and concrete) – the three C’s – are not followed.

Contributors:
Conference Title:
Conference Title:
16th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering
Conference Venue:
Santiago (CL)
Conference Dates:
2017-01-09 / 2017-01-13
Rights:
Text je chráněný podle autorského zákona č. 121/2000 Sb.



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 Record created 2017-01-18, last modified 2017-01-18


Original version of the author's contribution as presented on USB, paper 694.:
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