seismic analysis of persian historical brick masonry minarets

according to high height and weak tensile strength of materials in minarets, it is necessary to study the structural behaviour of minarets under earthquake loading. therefore nine historical brick masonry minarets in isfahan have been modelled and analysed by applying the nonlinear finite element method for two cases: 1) the whole minaret, and 2) only the outer shell. results show that all minarets fail due to inclined tensile cracks in bricks and bearing of materials under scaled ground motion records based on the 2800 code. parametric study has been done to find situations in which the minarets do not undergo failure. parameters have been the height of minarets, tensile and compressive strengths of materials, failure criterion, and damping ratio. conventional variation of the parameters does not prevent the failure of minarets due to earthquakes.