ABSTRACT
Structural masonry has been widely used in construction since early civilizations and constitute a large part of the building stock in both developed and developing countries. Important developments of new structural systems, such as reinforced concrete and steel structures, resulted in a considerable reduction in new unreinforced masonry (URM) constructions. Still, owing to its simplicity and sustainable characteristics of masonry, i.e. acoustic and thermal insulation, and fire protection, new URM is a promising structural typology. However, past seismic events confirmed that further developments are required to improve the seismic behavior of masonry buildings since there is a lack of seismic design rules on these structural systems. Although masonry structures have a high seismic vulnerability, it is not reasonable to assume that its construction would not be applicable in regions with low to moderate seismic hazard. Proper precautions and improved design rules would contribute to the construction of low- and medium-rise masonry buildings in seismic prone zones. Within this framework, the present study aims to develop experimental and numerical analysis on quasi-static cyclic testing on URM building with geometrical complexity. An experimental building is planned as a half-scale two-story building with structural irregularities in plan and elevation, such as having set back in one corner and irregular opening distributions, respectively. While the seismic codes cover designing rules mainly based on regular structures and impose certain penalties on structural irregularities, regular configurations are not representative ones due to architectural and functional concerns. This study focuses on understanding and assessing the global seismic behavior of a masonry building imposed to torsional effects. Thus, the numerical pushover analysis is based on blind prediction by means of finite element method to obtain capacity curves and decide a reasonable loading protocol for the experimental campaign.
