APPLIED ELEMENT MODELLING AND PUSHOVER ANALYSIS OF UNREINFORCED MASONRY BUILDINGS WITH FLEXIBLE ROOF DIAPHRAGM

Old and poorly constructed unreinforced masonry buildings are inherently vulnerable to earthquakes. Seismic analysis and assessment of these buildings with flexible diaphragmsi.e. without box behavior is challenging as the available assessment methods for reinforced concrete framed or masonry structures with rigid diaphragms are not directly applicable to these buildings. In such structures, the walls loaded in out-of-plane direction and those loaded in in-plane direction behave in significantly different ways during earthquakes, making a conventional global analysis ambiguous and unreliable. In this study, using the applied element method for numerical modelling and analysis, a simple and reliable methodology for seismic performance assessment of unreinforced masonry buildings with flexible roof diaphragm is presented which includes the out-of-plane behavior in the global analysis. The applicability of the methodology for subsequent steps in fragility and vulnerability assessment of such buildings using non-linear static procedures is also clarified.