Earthquake Resistant Building
Earthquake Resistant Building
Earthquake Resistant Building
Lightness
Symmetry
Regularity
Simplicity
Continuity
Size of building
1. Lightness:
The material is brittle and its strength degrade due to repetitive loadings.
Masonry has very low tensile strength and low shear strength specially with
poor mortars.
Masonry has great weight weight because of thick walls. Consequently the
inertia force are large.
Large stiffness of the material, which leads to large response to earthquake
waves of short natural period.
The wall to wall connection and roof to wall connection is generally weak.
In masonry construction, stress concentration occurs at corners of doors and
windows.
Poor construction quality because of use of locally available materials and
unskilled labours.
Failure Mechanisms of Masonry Buildings:
A masonry building may fail in various ways under the action of earthquake
forces. Some of the common modes of failure are:
Out of plane failure
In plane failure
Connection failure
Diaphragm failure
Failure due to opening in walls
Non-structural components failure
1. Out of plane failure
The force acting on the mass of the wall tends to overturn it.
The seismic resistance of the wall is by virtue of its weight and tensile
strength of mortar and it is very small.
This wall will collapse by overturning under the ground motion.
The wall has very less resistance in this direction due to small depth.
The bending of the wall results in development of tensile stress.
The masonry is very weak in tension and hence it cracks.
The cracking can lead to full or partial collapse of the wall.
This type of failure is called out of plane failure.
In plane failure:
The free standing wall fixed on the ground is subjected to ground motion on
its own plane.
The damage modes if an unreinforced shear wall depend on the length to
width ration of the wall.
A wall with small length to width ratio will generally develop a horizontal
crack due to bending tension and then slide due to shearing.
A wall with moderate length-to-width ratio and bounding frame diagonally
cracks due to shearing.
A wall with large length-to-width ratio, may develop diagonal tension at both
sides and horizontal cracks at the middle.
Connection Failure
Consider a complete wall with enclosure with a roof on the top subjected to
earthquake force acting along with x-axis as shown in fig.
The roof/slabs will transfer the earthquake force to the walls, causing
shearing and bending them.
To transfer the forces the roof must have enough strength in bending in the
horizontal plane.
This action is called diaphragm action.
The roofs and floors which are rigid and flat are bonded to the walls properly,
do not show any sign of diaphragm failure.
Failure due to opening in walls:
Openings are necessary in a building but the location and size of the opening
in walls affect the performance of masonry buildings during earthquake,
During earthquake shaking, inertia forces act n the strong direction of some
walls and in weak direction of others.
Walls shaken in weak direction seek support from other walls.
Walls B1 and B2 seek support from walls A1 and A2 for shaking in the direction
shown in fig.
Thus, walls transfer loads to each other at their junctions.
Hence, the masonry courses from the walls meeting at corners must have
good interlocking.
For this reason, opening near the wall corners are detrimental to good seismic
performance.
Non-structural components failure
Brick masonry building have large mass and hence attract large
horizontal forces during earthquake shaking.
They develop numerous cracks under both compressive and tensile
forces caused by earthquake shaking.
The focus of earthquake resistant masonry building construction is to
ensure that these effects are sustained without major damage or
collapse.
Appropriate choice of structural configuration can help achieve this.
The structural configuration of masonry buildings include aspects like
Overall shape and size of the building.
Distribution of mass and lateral load resisting elements across like
building.
Suggestions for construction of new masonry
building in earthquake sensitive are:
Site investigation must be carried out. Bearing capacity of soils should be
more than required safe bearing capacity.
Construction work should be carried out by qualified civil engineer.
Plan of building should be square or rectangular.
Flat concrete roof is preferred.
The thickness of wall should not be less than 230 mm.
All the construction material like cement, steel, sand, aggregates, bricks,
stone, timber, tiles etc. Should be of good quality conforming to IS
specification.
The proportion of cement: sand mortar should not be weaker than 1:4.
First class bricks should be used. Minimum compressive strength of bricks
should not be less than 35 kg/cm^2.
Number of stories should not be more than four.
The total height of building should not exceed 15 m.
Opening in wall should be minimum and centrally located. Total length of
opening in wall should not exceed 33% of the length of the wall.
Vertical reinforcement must be provided at corners of walls and t door jambs.
Proper R.C.C bands should be provided at plinth level, lintel level, caves
level, etc.
At window sill level, U-shaped, 8 f bars should be provided t every sixth layer.
Masonry work should be carried out in proper bond so that vertical joints are
broken.
Horizontal dowel bars should provided t all T and L-junctions. Dowels are
placed in every fourth course or at 50 cm intervals. 8 mm dia bars used as
dowel bars.
At T and L-junctions, toothed joints should be provided in masonry.
Water tank