Structural Behaviour and Retrofitting of Adobe Masonry Buildings

Varum, Humberto; Tarque, Nicola; Silveira, Dora; Camata, Guido; Lobo, Bruno; Blondet, Marcial; Figueiredo, A.; Rafi, Muhammad Masood; Oliveira, Cristina; Costa, Aníbal

doi:10.1007/978-3-642-39686-1_2

Cited by 42 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Buildings made with sun-dried bricks-or adobe-are one of the most common existing earth-based structures and comprise a high amount of cultural and architectural heritage of diverse cultures worldwide. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] In fact, the 2012 UNESCO Inventory of Earthen Architecture 5 demonstrated that the adobe construction technique is the most commonly used on inscribed earthen sites in the World Heritage List. This same study warns about the high vulnerability of earth architecture to natural disasters and states that around 25% of the World Heritage list of sites in danger is built with earth.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…5 Past earthquakes have demonstrated-with a tremendous cost of human lives and loss of cultural and heritage values-that most adobe structures have a high seismic vulnerability. 2,[8][9][10][11] Some examples of catastrophic events reported in the literature are Cartago (Costa Rica), 1910 12 ; Popayán (Colombia), 1983 13 ; Chile, 1985 14 ; Northridge (California, US), 1994 10 ; El Salvador, 2001 15 ; Bam (Iran), 2003 6,16 ; Chile, 2010 14 ; and Nepal, 2015. 17 Unretrofitted adobe structures pose a high risk to human lives, especially because of the sudden collapse of entire wall blocks, which is a very common damage mechanism resulting from the out-of-plane bending response of walls during strong ground shaking.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Field investigations on the performance of buildings during earthquakes have proven that the most vulnerable parts of adobe structures are their corners . These regions are the first to evidence damage—usually as vertical cracks—because they have high‐stress concentrations, as observed experimentally by Bossio et al in full‐scale adobe house specimens in Peru, and also demonstrated numerically by Gomes et al in a typical historic earthen structure in Portugal. From the 14 damage typologies identified by The Getty Conservation Institute in historic adobe structures in California, four are related to corner walls .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

“…Buildings made with sun‐dried bricks—or adobe—are one of the most common existing earth‐based structures and comprise a high amount of cultural and architectural heritage of diverse cultures worldwide . In fact, the 2012 UNESCO Inventory of Earthen Architecture demonstrated that the adobe construction technique is the most commonly used on inscribed earthen sites in the World Heritage List.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This same study warns about the high vulnerability of earth architecture to natural disasters and states that around 25% of the World Heritage list of sites in danger is built with earth . Past earthquakes have demonstrated—with a tremendous cost of human lives and loss of cultural and heritage values—that most adobe structures have a high seismic vulnerability . Some examples of catastrophic events reported in the literature are Cartago (Costa Rica), 1910; Popayán (Colombia), 1983; Chile, 1985; Northridge (California, US), 1994; El Salvador, 2001; Bam (Iran), 2003; Chile, 2010; and Nepal, 2015 …”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Out‐of‐plane shaking table tests of full‐scale historic adobe corner walls retrofitted with timber elements

Reyes

Galvis

Liu

et al. 2019

Earthq Engng Struct Dyn

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Summary Historic adobe structures pose a high seismic risk mainly because of the poor out‐of‐plane bending response of their walls that may produce fatalities and significant economic, cultural, and heritage losses. In this paper, we propose a retrofitting technique that increases the wall strength for both in‐plane and out‐of‐plane directions. This technique consists of vertical and horizontal timber elements symmetrically installed on each face of the wall to form a confining wood frame, supplemented with vertical tensors that pre‐compress the wall. This study evaluates the performance of this retrofitting technique with a two‐set experimental program on full‐scale historic adobe walls. On the first set, four specimens were subjected to a static overturning test with boundary conditions representing the confinement effect at both ends by orthogonal walls. On the second set, three full‐scale specimens, one unretrofitted and two retrofitted, were subjected to four ground motion records on a shaking table to assess the out‐of‐plane dynamic behavior of typical corner walls. The unretrofitted specimen collapsed during the second motion (peak ground acceleration [PGA] = 0.39 g), while both retrofitted walls survived all four motions (maximum PGA of 0.75 g) proving the high effectiveness of the proposed retrofitting. The addition of base anchors as a variation of the retrofitting technique significantly reduced the rocking effects and the residual drifts of the system, thus improving its overall seismic performance. Further research is needed to develop guidelines for seismic retrofit of heritage buildings including multistory full‐scale tests of specimens with various types of openings and retrofitting strategies that minimize their architectural impact.

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