Dynamic Behaviour of Building Structure using Shock Table

Abstract

Masonry is one of the most popular construction materials owing to its availability locally and economy. It has been since thousands of years in the form of load bearing and/or non load bearing structural element to variety of buildings. However, stone masonry is, perhaps, better option to build non-engineered building in hilly region of the country. However, it has been found that such non-engineered buildings are highly vulnerable to seismic events. Stone masonry structural element being weak in out of plane direction mostly gives up under seismic events. This has been proven during Bhuj earthquake, 2001 and most recently Nepal earthquake, 2015.Thus it becomes imperative to enhance the seismic resistance of stone masonry structural element by attempting innovative yet economical means/technologies. Apart, behaviour of reinforced concrete and brick masonry structures with non-conventional geometry during a seismic event is important study as seismic hazard offered by such structure is unknown or unpredictable. In the present study, major focus is to assess to efficiency of novel means of imparting seismic strengthening to stone masonry structural wall with Polypropylene (PP) Band. Three, free standing, half-scale model of stone masonry structural wall, one with stone masonry with mud mortar and other two with Polypropylene (PP) Band in vertical direction of wall and with Polypropylene (PP) Band in both vertical and horizontal direction of wall simultaneously constructed. Three walls constructed on unique Shock Table facility of Civil Engineering Department, Institute of Technology, Nirma University are tested through free falling pendulum from various degrees. Walls are instrumented with uni-axial accelerometer, Data acquisition system and computer to capture acceleration results of walls under different shocks offered. It has been observed that stone masonry wall with Polypropylene (PP) Band in both direction of wall performs best amongst all the stone masonry walls. Thus stone masonry wall with Polypropylene (PP) Band, a novel mean of impact seismic resistance, shows promising technologies that may be adopted in practice. A non-conventional Reinforced concrete (RC) wall cladded with special types of masonry called Compressed Stabilized Earth Bricks (CSEB)called "Gopuram" is erected on shock table facility to study its behaviour under dynamic load. It has been found that Gopuram has withstand high dynamic load with major damage except local failure of CSEB masonry at few locations.