Seismic Performance Assessment of Low-Rise Buildings with Structural and Non-Structural Masonry Walls

Abstract

Masonry structures are prevalent worldwide, but the preference for using masonry construction is far greater in developing countries, like Pakistan. This is mainly due to readily available raw materials, low-cost manufacturing, also the confidence and skill of local labour in working with masonry is higher as compared to any other construction material. This cheapness of construction comes with the price of inadequate structural performance in case of a seismic event. Pakistan due to its geological setting falls victim to high and frequent seismic activities. This demands the necessity of acceptable performance from structures to avoid economic and human loss. This research deals with the performance assessment of most commonly constructed structures in Pakistan. In local design practices, so far, there is no trend of assessing the performance of URM structures. To promote the proper seismic assessment in the country, there is a need for simplistic approaches which are less computationally demanding, and easy to use at the same time be able to accurately represent the actual performance of the structures. In this study, a simplified methodology to model masonry is presented and validated against experimental results. After validation of proposed model, a parametric study is carried out to explore the effect of wall thickness, the number of storeys, and opening sizes on the in-plane performance of masonry walls.