U. Meyer

Technische Geschäftsführung, Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mauerziegel e.V., Schaumburg-Lippe-Str. 4, 53113 Bonn, Germany, meyer@ziegel.de

ABSTRACT

A full scale unreinforced masonry terraced house has been subjected to pseudo-dynamic tests to verify the resistance against earthquake loads in areas of low and moderate seismicity. The tests were part of ESECMaSE, a four year research project on European level, incorporating a total of 26 partners from research and industry in seven European countries.

Preliminary tests on shear walls were carried out using a new test set-up developed within the project. The structure resisted the design earthquake for the moderate seismicity regions in Central Europe without significant cracking. The resistance of the building was significantly higher than it could be expected by the results of the preliminary tests on shear walls. This seems to be due to a redistribution of loads and the effect of combined cross sections. The commonly used cantilever design approach for unreinforced masonry shear walls does not seem to be appropriate.

KEYWORDS: clay unit masonry, earthquake resistance, pseudo-dynamic testing, shear resistance.

A7-2