Within the framework of the joint U.S.-Japan masonry research program, the specific objective of the U.S. program is to develop an experimentally verified design and analysis methodology that will ensure satisfactory performance of reinforced masonry buildings under a wide range of seismic loadings. In particular, under severe earthquake loadings such buildings must exhibit ductile behavior. A key aspect of the philosophy adopted by the U.S. program is to support the design and analysis development by an increasingly complex set of experiments culminating with the study of a five-story full-scale masonry building. This experiment is essential to achieve the objectives of the program in that it will provide the final validation of the analytical and computational models developed, and thus will form the basis for the design recommendations to be made at the culmination of the overall project. This research project is a full-scale building test conducted at the Charles Lee Powell Structural Systems Laboratory at the San Diego campus of the University of California. The experiment is performed using a reaction wall concept, in which the building is subjected to generated displacement histories at the floor levels via hydraulic actuators in a manner that simulates the displacements during an actual seismic event.
