Masonry and Earthquakes: Material Properties, Experimental Testing and Design Approaches

Abstract

Earthquakes are natural disasters which can occur without warning and they can affect large areas. Earthquakes are often accompanied by aftershocks which may cause additional damage to an already damaged structure or lead to failure. Consequences of earthquakes, such as rock falls, fires, explosions etc., can be very large in the affected areas. An example is the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Thereby many lives were killed by the ensuing fire. But not only past events have had fatal consequences, also events of recent years caused countless deaths and consequential damages e.g. the 2010 earthquake in Haiti with a death toll of more than 250,000 people (Eberhard et al., 2011) or the 2011 earthquake in Fukushima, Japan with high consequential damages e.g. to the nuclear power plant (Takewaki et al., 2011) or both earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand with high damage on cultural heritage (Ingham & Griffith, 2011; Ingham et al., 2011).