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Application of PEER performance based earthquake engineering methodology to unreinforced masonry buildings
Unreinforced masonry structure is one of the first type of buildings that have been used widely in different parts of the world. The weak performance of these structures under earthquake loads have led to huge loss of lives and properties at different parts of the world. Victims of natural disasters that live in masonry structures, get buried under heavy weight of masonry wall, which may cause immediate death or hinder search and rescue operations. Moreover, numerous important historic sites and structures are exposed to the same aggression while being deteriorated and often poorly maintained. In addition to the evaluation of their performance, it is important to analyze rehabilitation solutions and remedial actions for existing buildings. Hence, evaluating the vulnerability of masonry is a key issue in risk analysis.In the recent earthquake at Napa, north of San Fransisco, severe structural damage was observed in unreinforced masonry buildings. Therefore, there is a great need to assess the performance of existing URM buildings under earthquake movement especially in historical part of the cities like Napa. In this study, the performance based earthquake engineering framework which has been developed at Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) center is applied to a masonry building located at downtown area of Napa. In this methodology, an explicit description of building's performance is provided considering uncertainties in earthquake ground motion characteristics, structural response, physical damages and human and economical losses. The outputs of this methodology is estimation of monetary losses such as repair cost, casualties and downtime which is meaningful to owners and stakeholders and give them a better insight of the performance of these kind of buildings in the future events.
Author(s):
Maryam Tabbakhha
UC Berkeley
United States
Khalid Mosalam
UC Berkeley
United States