Unreinforced masonry is that in which the tensile strength of the masonry is taken into consideration in design. Allowable out-of-plane tensile stress values are a function of the mortar type, such as Portland cement/lime mortar vs. masonry cement mortar or type M or S mortar vs. type N mortar. The allowable tensile stress is also a function of the masonry construction, such as tension parallel...

Structural robustness is a significant property towards improving resilience of buildings, i.e. enhance their ability to withstand and recover from extreme events which often can cause local damage progressive collapse. It widely accepted that depends on the capacity structure activate alternative load paths (ALPs) after failure load-bearing elements, e.g. columns. Early evidence during World W...

A ground-penetrating radar with polarimetric capability has been used for investigating masonry walls. The obtained results show that hollow spaces inside masonry give a well-detectable polarimetric signature that can be usefully used for detecting internal cavities in walls, and for characterizing the masonry. r 2007 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

When testing multi-story structures on a shaking table, most testing facilities require a reduced scale model. Producing scale test units at small scale is particularly challenging for unreinforced masonry structures. Previous work by other researchers showed that scaling of units and mortar joints is mandatory in order to obtain for the reduced scale masonry failure modes, which are similar to...

The main components which affect the earthquake damage grades classification of multistory masonry buildings and the damage characters are summarized and analyzed through the statistics and analysis of a large number of previous earthquake damage data. According to the standard of earthquake damage grades classification, the damage numbers of each component of multistory masonry buildings under...