Recent earthquakes occurred in many parts of the world have shown that unreinforced masonry [URM] buildings constructed according to older codes may constitute an important source of risk. It is known that the mechanical response of the masonry structures depends on several factors including the compressive and shear strength of its constituents, bricks shape as well as the volumetric ratio between the wall texture and components. In this study, the effects of the material choices of a particular type of masonry buildings were studied. The typology chosen in this study represents a typified masonry building of the current Albanian building stock; these buildings were mostly built between 1977-78 and thus were designed without considering the seismic requirements proposed in today's modern codes. This template building has been constructed in different regions of the country with the same architectural and structural configuration in two versions; red clay bricks and silicate bricks. The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of these two different materials on the seismic response of the selected masonry building. The evaluation is based on the use of nonlinear static analyses, performed by using TREMURI software. In order to estimate the reliable seismic response for this typology, extensive research in terms of historical information, structural characterization and the definition of the inherent material parameters has been executed. Upon the evaluation of the obtained results, in contrast to the type of buildings constructed by clay masonry, calcium silicate one showed a stiffer and slightly stronger response. However, at similar values of in-plane, lateral drift they exhibited more brittle response yielding unforeseen damage during seismic excitations.
This paper aims to study the seismic performance of school buildings, which have been built in accordance with template unreinforced masonry [URM] school projects in Albania. For this purpose, the most widely used two template designs which were damaged during the 2019 Durrës (Albania) Earthquakes, have been selected. Analytical models of each school were prepared following the experimental data on the quality of the masonry constitutive components of the selected school buildings. Geotechnical investigations were deployed to obtain the soil characteristics of the area where the schools’ foundation are located. Nonlinear static analyses have been performed to obtain the seismic capacity, the performance point and the damage level states. The performance-based method has been used to that purpose. The detailed examination of capacity curves and performance evaluation identified deficiencies and weak parts of the school building blocks. Results have shown that existing school buildings constructed pre-modern codes are far from satisfying the required performance criteria, suggesting that urgent response and necessary measure should be put into action.
The Mw = 6.4 November 26, 2019 02:54 UTC earthquake struck near the city of Durrës, Thumanë. Since the earthquake struck on 26 November, resulting in 51 deaths and up to 750 people injured. Many buildings in Durrës and Thumanë were collapsed and many more were seriously damaged. The inspection of the damaged buildings and declared uninhabitable, revealed many problems related to their design. After 1990 and especially after 2000 the construction of multistorey reinforced concrete buildings (9-12 floors) mainly for residential and service facilities was very intensive.These structures are mainly designed referering to old Albanian design codes KTP-89 and these structures are the ones most damaged by seismic event and are mainly related to bypassing the design codes and specific criterios for structures in seismic areas. But it should be noted that one of the reasons for their non-collapse is that they are designed as very elastic structures so consequently having reduced seismic forces, but not meet the requirements of Eurocode 8 and KTP-89 to other criterias. To illustrate the above problem,we will show the most common avoidances from general rules of design according to EC8. The fundamental periods of of 9-12 floors buildings are much larger that the values that should have these type of structures according to design codes. The factors related to the above are and cousing the damage, colapse of the filling and the partition walls and also creating panic and endangering the lives of residents are the element designs such of hidden beams in the slabs, lack of diaphragms and cores. Inadequate design of foundations cause the differentials settlements and inclination of objects as well. Another problem is incorrect dimensioning of seismic gaps between two structures.
Nowadays cost of highway materials increase every year. In addition, use of marginal materials results in early development of pavement distress, requiring more frequent repairs also rehabilitation, associated lane closures, traffic congestion in high volume traffic areas which increases the potential for construction zone accidents and increased levels of environmental pollution related to automobile emissions. Therefore, there is a strong desire in our country to optimize the use of materials currently used for highway pavement construction and to seek advanced materials that are cheaper and environmentally friendly. It has now been recognized that the age of limitless construction materials and the use of conventional materials in their present form is fast coming to an end, and new technologies need to be developed to continue to support the rehabilitation and reconstruction of pavements. Today, concerns about limited availability and sustainability are driving the search for new and advanced materials for highway construction. In this pap er we describe the potential for considering the use of alternative materials, also encourage the industry to accelerate the development and implementation of products still under development. The materials range from materials under development to recently commercialized materials.
Many buildings in Albania continue to be designed with the old national standards which are not renewed for more than 30 years. So even the buildings are designed and constructed in recent years. If they are designed according to European Codes for design on earthquake areas, they will be heavily damaged or collapsed. The article gives the analysis and design for adopting a reinforced concrete structure built several years ago with new European Codes that in the near future will become effective even in our country. Initially the article describes the conditions of the existing structure and after that gives the performed nonlinear analysis (adaptive pushover) and structural measures suitable for this type of structure. The analyzed structure is very common in Albania and this study gives recommendations for the methodology of design and the most appropriate strategy of retrofitting these kinds of structures in order to achieve the required level of performance and increase their level of security based on European Codes.
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