The utilization of brick walls for resisting earthquake in building technology

Abstract

Many structures in Indonesia use reinforced concrete frames with brick walls as their infill. Commonly, the engineers consider brick walls as the partitions and count them as the non-structural elements in the structure design. However, brick walls are capable of resisting earthquake by yielding high stiffness to the structure in case the brick walls are integrated well with the frames. It will reduce the non-structural destructions that happen to structures which is one of the most frequently impacts in the earthquake. This paper will take the effects of applying brick walls as the structural elements up by comparing it with the structure using brick walls as the partitions. The modeling of the brick walls uses the equivalent spectrum method meanwhile the seismic analysis uses the respon spectrum method. The utilization of brick walls can cause the decrement of the natural period to 42%. It also reduce the structure displacements to 53% in X-direction and 67% in Y-direction and the story drifts to 57% in X-direction and 71% in Y-direction. Otherwise, it causes the increment of the base shear only up to 3% in X-direction and 7% in Y-direction.