Review ArticleA critical review of retrofitting methods for unreinforced masonry structures
Section snippets
Background to the problem
Earthquakes are results of the deformations of tectonic plates on two sides of a fault resulting from the tendency of relative displacement between the two tectonic plates. These deformations take place over the years, strain energy keeps on accumulating in the tectonic plates. Finally, a slip occurs at the fault when the plates slips back to their original undeformed shape suddenly releasing a tremendous amount of energy. The above process generates earthquakes as per the classical elastic
Types of URM buildings vulnerable to collapse during earthquakes
URM buildings can broadly be arranged into three common categories: adobe, brick and stone masonry. Each of these has features and construction methods that are dependent on its geographic location and level of local expertise. Although cheap and easy to build, all URM buildings have been observed to be susceptible to earthquakes, as will be explained in this review.
Common failure mechanisms of URM buildings
Construction methods and technologies are dependent on local conditions and level of engineering expertise as well as demographic factors. For example, URM structures are common in North America but there are building codes in place to regulate construction and determine how well protected structures are from seismic loading. In contrast, the rapid urbanization of countries such as Nepal has resulted in a huge rise in demand for quick and cheap housing without regulation or controls in place to
General surface treatment
The surface treatment process involves constructing a steel or polymer mesh around the building
Summary and conclusions
The study begins with broad idea about the casualties due to past earthquakes in about last 100 years discussed through presentation of Table 1. Following such discussions, historic evolution of various earthquake resisting practices have discussed and presented in Table 2. The importance of failure of adobe and masonry buildings is then discussed to show that such buildings form a large part of the habitat of the ordinary people. Thus, failure of such building may have great impact on human
Acknowledgments:
The first author would like to thank the project students [Josh Macabuag, Louisa Man, Andrew Smith, Thomas Redman, Kate Humphreys and Luke Hobbs] over the years for contributing to the study. Some of the tests reported were carried out at the BLADE [Bristol Lab for Advanced Dynamic Engineering] laboratories.
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