Experimental Seismic Response of a Half-Scale Stone Masonry Building Aggregate: Effects of Retrofit Strategies

Equivalent-Frame Modeling of Two Shaking Table Tests of Masonry Buildings Accounting for Their Out-Of-Plane Response

“…The first case study for the proposed equivalent frame model approach accounting for out-of-plane behavior and complex nonlinear connections is a stone masonry building recently tested on a shaking table in EUCENTRE, Pavia (Italy) (Guerrini et al, 2019;Senaldi et al, 2019). The building, built in half scale due to the space limitations imposed by the testing equipment, is composed of two adjacent units of different heights, with a weak connection between them (Figure 2).…”

“…Because the test unit represents the prototype at half scale, scaling laws for time, mass, and stiffness/strength properties were applied. The scaling of material properties was approximated by the use of expanded polystyrene spheres added in 40% proportion to the mortar (Senaldi et al, 2019).…”

“…The structure was subjected to ground motions of increasing intensities. First, some low-intensity records were applied (Senaldi et al, 2019), which will not be simulated here, since they did not produce any significant damage that could have affected the performance of the structure when subjected to higher intensity records. The main shaking was obtained by scaling the Montenegro earthquake (1979).…”

“…For the scope of study, we analyze only the first eight runs that were performed on the building with weak connections. A more detailed description of the building prototype, construction details, and testing procedure are given in Senaldi et al (2019), to which the reader is referred.…”

“…The masonry properties were derived from various tests on panels constructed with the same masonry typology as used for the construction of the building. These tests included uniaxial compression tests, diagonal compression tests (Senaldi et al, 2019), and four shear-compression tests on two squat (H = 1.45 m, L = 1.17 m, t = 0.30 m) panels and two slender panels (H = 1.80 m, L = 0.60 m, t = 0.30 m), representing the dimensions of the ground story piers of the east façade. Results of the calibration against such tests are presented in Figure 3 for two panels of the squat series (CT) and one of the slender series (CS).…”