Retrofitting Methods for Unreinforced Masonry Constructions against earthquakes

Earthquake has been a public fear from the first ages of human till now and that is only because still, the exact place and time of it cannot be predicted. So having resistant structures in the event of earthquake is the key to control the financial losses and casualties. For having a resistance structure, it has to be changed to a coherent box which will be discussed further; new buildings should be built and older ones should be retrofitted according to regulations to become more like a coherent box. Among all the different types of structures, the one that discussed in this paper is the Unreinforced Masonry (URM) buildings type which is used not only in rural but also in urban areas as well and more than 70% of the schools have masonry materials in them. Masonry structures are easy to build, no special expertise is needed for them and the material is mostly available even in the most remote places. In this study we talk about different kinds, deficiencies, failing patterns and mechanisms of URM structures. Different retrofitting methods is being discussed and pros and cons and cost status of each is being discussed to provide a comparable template. In addition to what listed, information about some projects had been gathered from interviews. The scope of this thesis is to study different retrofitting methods for URM buildings specially schools according to case studies and analyzing their difference with focus on their cost

Keywords:

Retrofitting , URM structures , schools