The Roman Pantheon is among the largest unreinforced masonry dome ever built and is an unparalleled example of the construction capabilities of the ancient Romans. As one of the most well-known buildings in the world, its preservation remains important because of its cultural and societal significance, and the methods used to assess the safety of historic masonry structures continue to be devel...

A thin layer of ductile fiber-reinforced mortar material referred to as Engineered Cementitious Composites, or ECC has been experimentally investigated as a seismic retrofit for unreinforced masonry infill walls in non-ductile reinforced concrete frames. Compression tests of masonry prisms retrofitted with 13mm of ECC were conducted representing the compression strut of a masonry infill under i...

Burnt bricks lined with mortar were among the materials used in the construction of historical load-bearing structures. The need to know the strength characteristics of masonry material arises during repairs of historical structures and their subsequent static securing. These can be investigated either by sampling a masonry specimen, or the employment of non-destructive testing methods. With de...

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.

There is a need to improve construction management students spatial and visualization skills. The growing use of 3-D models, typically referred to as building information modeling (BIM) highlights the importance of this form of communication. As students learning styles change new teaching methods are needed to deliver course content in a manner that reaches the student. The use of 3-D models i...

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...

Laboratory experimental data is often erroneous. This error is more apparent in data obtained from testing of anisotropic composite materials such as masonry wall panels. In this paper data colleted from the laboratory tests of masonry panels is presented. Methodologies for reducing (correcting) error in laboratory tested data are discussed. The concept of stiffness/strength corrector to model ...

On April 25, 2015, a M7.8 earthquake rattled central Nepal; ground motion recorded in Kantipath, Kathmandu, 76.86 km east of the epicenter suggested that the low-frequency component was dominant. We consider data from eight aftershocks following the Gorkha earthquake and analyze ground motion characteristics; we found that most of the ground motion records are dominated by low frequencies for e...