ABSTRACT

There are a lot of historic castle masonry walls all over Japan. Those are regarded as the important cultural properties to be conserved. However, in recent years, the masonry walls frequently suffered the collapse due to the strong earthquake such as the 2016 Kumamoto Earthquake, and the investigations on the mechanical characteristics and the effective reinforcement method of the masonry walls have become the urgent task. In this study, to study the influence of the vertical excitation on the stability of the masonry wall, a series of shaking analysis was carried out using the coupled Numerical Manifold Method and Discontinuous Deformation Analysis (NMM-DDA), a discontinuum-based numerical method. The simulated results showed that the vertical excitation changes the apparent gravity of the soil and the stones, and consequently affect the amount of the deformation during the excitation.