Seismic Behavior of Brick Masonry Walls Representative of Ancient Chinese Pagoda Walls Subjected to In-plane Cyclic Loading

ABSTRACT

Many ancient brick masonry structures were damaged in earthquakes all over the world. Hence, in this study, the seismic behaviors of brick-scaled wall specimens representative of ancient Chinese pagodas were studied subjected to in-plane cyclic loading. Five ½-scale wall specimens with different arched opening sizes were constructed traditionally using aged burnt clay bricks collected from a demolished building and sticky rice mortar. The strength, stiffness, ductility, and energy dissipation capacity of the wall specimens were analyzed. The results showed that the arched opening size and vertical stress had a significant effect on the seismic behaviors of these walls. The damage conditions of the wall specimens at different displacements were also assessed and the assessment results showed that all the wall specimens reached the collapse damage at last.

KEYWORDS:

• Ancient pagoda
• arched opening size
• brick masonry wall
• damage assessment
• seismic behavior

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank State Key Laboratory of Green Building in Western China, School of Civil Engineering, Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology for their assistance in this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant No. 51878550].