Seismic performance of clay bricks construction

Abstract

The extensive use of masonry construction accompanied by the seismic hazard in Iraq requires comprehensive studies to assess the seismic performance of such construction. This study aims to evaluate the seismic performance of URM and CM buildings by their nonlinear time-history responses. ANSYS 18.2 software has been used to perform the nonlinear dynamic analyses. The mechanical properties have been investigated as the first step of the study. A simple mechanical instrument was improvised to determine the tensile strength of masonry directly. Ground motions were chosen in a manner so that their peak ground accelerations and site soils are as similar as possible to those in the South of Iraq. The computer software terminated all the analyses before the ends of the applied earthquake duration because of the solutions did not converge. In the numerical models, severe cracks have been observed in both URM and CM models, indicating their unsafe seismic performance. The minor cracks in confining concrete in the CM model compared to the severe ones in the masonry walls of the same model show the capability of the confinement to prevent the disintegration of collapsed masonry walls, at least in damaging cases like the building state at the solution termination.