Abstract:
One of the main causes of casualties in major
earthquakes around the world is the collapse of
low earthquake resistant masonry structures.
Retrofitting of these types of structures is the key
issue for earthquake disaster mitigation in
developing countries, because it is the only way
to reduce significantly casualties in future
earthquakes. This paper presents an innovative
retrofitting method for masonry houses, which
consists of polypropylene bands (PP-band)
arranged in a mesh fashion. The PP-band
technology aims to prevent or, at least, put off
wall collapse by providing both sides with the
mesh made of a cheap packthread and keeping
the integrity of the walls. In order to verify the
suitability of the proposed method, a series of
masonry wallettes, with and without retrofitting,
was tested under in-plane and out-of-plane loads.
Although the retrofitted wall peak strength was
almost the same as that of the bare wall, its postpeak
strength was larger and sustained for lateral
drifts. In order to investigate the proposed
retrofitting features for different material
properties and mesh configurations, tests on a
number of masonry wallettes were performed.
