The 1994 Northridge earthquake caused widespread damage to steel moment-resisting frames including brittle fractures of beam-to-column welded moment connections. The damage was in the form of brittle failures at the interface of the beam and column members and was detected in multistory buildings. Improvements to these pre-Northridge existing connections are often required as part of an overall strengthening scheme, particularly when higher performance levels are desired. To improve the behavior of moment resisting connections, the SidePlate connection was designed and began to market as an alternative moment connection. The SidePlate connection technology uses a pair of parallel full-depth side plates to connect the beam to the column, thereby eliminating the traditional welded connection between the end of the beam and the face of the column flange. Plastic Hinge

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Many unreinforced masonry structures were vulnerable in the past earthquakes and required retrofitting. However, the vulnerability of masonry structures could solve by providing numerous retrofitting approaches, scarcity of appropriate methods that may provide a solution for the historical masonry structures with lesser effects on their façade is vehemently sensible. In this study, two one-third scale masonry wall specimens made by clay bricks were tested under constant vertical and cyclic lateral loading. The specimens consist of an unreinforced wall and a wall retrofitted by GFRP strips. This study investigates the seismic behavior of unreinforced masonry walls before and after using GFRP strips on their bedjoints. To this purpose, various patterns of using GFRP strips have been studied by simplified micro-modeling. The consequence indicates that the proposed retrofitting technique could improve the lateral strength and stiffness of the unreinforced masonry wall along with a considerable increase in the energy dissipation and ductility content, which leads to making a change in the behavior of the wall from brittle to ductile failure. The proposed method could apply to the modern historical structures in which cement mortar has been used as an adhesive between the masonry layers.