Seismic performance of an unreinforced masonry building: An experimental investigation

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation carried out to investigate the seismic performance of a two storey brick masonry house with one room in each floor. A half‐scale building constructed using single wythe clay brick masonry laid in cement sand mortar and a conventional timber floor and timber roof clad with clay tiles was tested under earthquake ground motions on a shaking table, first in the longitudinal direction and then in the transverse direction. In each direction, the building was subjected to different ground motions with gradually increasing intensity. Dynamic properties of the system were assessed through white‐noise tests after each ground motion. The building suffered increasing levels of damage as the excitations became more severe. The damage ranged from cracking to global/local rocking of different piers and partial out‐of‐plane failure of the walls. Nevertheless, the building did not collapse under base excitations with peak ground acceleration up to 0.8g. General behaviour of the tested building model during the tests is discussed, and fragility curves are developed for unreinforced masonry buildings based on the experimental results. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.