While masonry materials are inherently strong under gravity loads, loadbearing masonry walls can easily fail under lateral earthquake, wind or impact loads, causing collapse of the building. Accurate evaluation of collapse potential and improvement of collapse resistance of loadbearing masonry buildings are critical research needs to increase the resilience of nation's infrastructure against man-made and natural hazards. The major objective of this project is to generate experimental evidence by physically testing and recording existing multi-story masonry buildings during their scheduled demolition. The project aims to answer the question: How are the gravity loads on a loadbearing masonry wall redistributed within a multi-story building if one or more walls are suddenly removed? The answers to this question will improve understanding of collapse risk of masonry buildings.
The mechanics of collapse and redistribution of loads within a loadbearing masonry building has not been well understood because of lack of experimental data and the difficulty in analyzing this complex structural system. During the demolition of existing masonry buildings on the campus a novel stereo visual data collection system will be used to capture the dynamic collapse process. In addition, other sensors will record deformation and redistribution of loads during controlled removal of walls. This project will provide much needed experimental data on full-scale buildings to validate the results of computational models, such as the axial spring models, reported in the literature. The numerical research, along with the measured experimental response, will characterize the dynamic collapse mechanism of masonry buildings due to sudden loss of one or more walls. The unique experimental data will be archived for future use by other researchers.
