Evaluation of the seismic performance of masonry walls reinforced with wooden elements

Abstract

Despite the large numbers of masonry buildings in the country, limited researches are conducted to analyze their seismic responses. Evidence suggests that unreinforced masonry buildings in destructive earthquakes are sentenced to destruction. On the other hand, according to the seismicity in Iran, the need for strengthening or reinforcement of these structures is essential. Wood due to good tensile strength, cheap price and availability has been noticed from past to present. Wood along the fibers has much hardness and good tensile and compressive strength compared with masonry walls and hence it is selected to strengthen masonry wall. In the models presented in this paper, Hill yield criterion is used for the wood, William Warnke yield criterion is used for the masonry wall and the possibility of sliding and gap between wood and masonry wall is taken into account by using contact elements with Mohr-colomb behavioral model. The validation of models presented in this paper is conducted with the help of experimental results and a very good match is observed. In any reinforced wall, the number of wooden elements and their position have changed. Finally increase percent in ultimate strength, increase percent of linear elastic strength, ductility coefficient, cracking distribution, distribution of stress, gap, sliding and the plastic strain in the samples have been investigated. The best seismic performance among the models presented in this paper is belongs to the model that strengthened with two horizontal wood.

Keywords

• masonry wall
• wood
• hill yield criteria
• orthotropic behavior
• nonlinear static analysis
• finite element