Seismic Performance Assessment of Low-Rise Unreinforced Stone and Brick Masonry School Buildings in the district of Kashmir, Pakistan

Abstract

The performance of unreinforced stone and brick masonry buildings in a seismically active region are considered to be highly vulnerable if proper construction practices and detailing are not implemented. The illustration of the fragile performance of URM buildings especially in event of the 2005 earthquake in Kashmir, Pakistan cannot be disregarded. According to a survey by the Engineering Research Institute, around 67% of educational institutions in the region were destroyed, resulting in hundreds of deaths and enormous infrastructure and economic losses. In this context, the paper is focused on the seismic performance evaluation of URM stone and brick school buildings located in Kashmir. The database of existing URM school buildings of Kashmir was utilized which represents zone 04, the seismically most active zone in Pakistan. Two URM stone and brick school buildings are considered typological representative school building stock in the region. The case study buildings were modeled in 3 MURI software based on the equivalent frame method approach and a non-linear static analysis was performed to assess their seismic performance. The performance limit states were defined on a capacity curve of the model according to Euro-code criteria. The performance-based assessment by the N2 method was carried out in 3-Muri software to evaluate the performance points and assess the seismic strengthening of stone masonry school buildings. In addition to that, a set of seismic strengthening measures were adopted in the original models to determine the improvement in the global behavior of the structures.