Masonry buildings subjected to settlements: half-scale testing, detailed measurements, and insights into behaviour

Industry procedures to assess the risk of settlement-induced damage to masonry buildings ignore key aspects of the problem, such as the influences of building weight, façade openings, and floor structures. Experimental data are needed to characterise the influence of these aspects on damage. This paper describes tests on three brick masonry half-scale building models subjected to settlements. The use of scaling rules in choosing the model materials and kentledge, the settlement apparatus, and the cross-validation of displacement and strain measurements are presented. Comparative evaluation of building responses show that: (i) the distribution of building weight and the resulting in-situ stresses play a key role in determining compliance to settlements, (ii) openings make the structure vulnerable to cracking and (iii) floor slabs stiffen and strengthen the building and prevent the formation of damage in the upper floors, leading to a concentration of damage at the ground storey

A two-stage numerical analysis approach for the assessment of the settlement response of the pre-damaged historic Hoca Pasha Mosque

The current article presents a case study of the settlement response of the historic Hoca Pasha Mosque that involves uncertainties arising from the complex excavation activities, soil properties, building materials, and geometry and the presence of pre-existing cracks in the mosque’s walls. The objective is to demonstrate the added value of a two-stage numerical analysis approach for the assessment of the settlement response of the building. The first stage comprises analyses of the structural behavior using the monitored settlements for each wall. The second stage examines the behavior of the complete building as a whole. The effects of soil-structure interaction and the pre-existing cracks are considered through discrete interface elements. It is shown that executed simulations can reasonably reproduce the overall settlement response, resulting stresses and the pre-existing crack activities. The parametric analyses in the second stage also produce generalizable results, of use beyond the specific case. Namely, as the soil/structure stiffness ratio increases the settlement-induced vulnerability increases. Including soil-structure interaction in the analyses reduces tensile strains due to differential settlements. Including pre-existing cracks reduces tensile strains in the vicinity of the cracks but results in an increase of stresses in neighboring sections

Damage to monumental masonry buildings in Hatay and Osmaniye following the 2023 Turkey earthquake sequence: The role of wall geometry, construction quality, and material properties

This article reports on the findings of an investigation on 29 historic stone masonry buildings located in the cities of Hatay and Osmaniye following the 2023 Turkey earthquake sequence. The earthquake couplet on 6 February (with moment magnitudes 7.8 and 7.5) and the following events (including another earthquake which occurred on 20 February with a moment magnitude of 6.3) resulted in significant damage to the buildings. To understand why, the examined buildings were assigned an EMS-98 damage level (ranging from 1 to 5) and descriptive response categories (masonry disaggregation, local mechanism, and global response). Overall damage statistics indicated that masonry disaggregation was common and coterminous with local mechanism response. Wall geometry and construction quality indices were then investigated to explore why these were the dominant damage mechanisms. Wall geometry indices highlighted insufficient amount of walls to resist the local seismic demands, particularly in the transverse (e.g. short) direction of buildings. This deficit promoted the formation of local mechanisms. Construction quality indices suggested that stone layouts did not enable interlocking and that the walls were prone to disaggregation. To further investigate the role of material properties on the observed damage, materials were characterized using three non-destructive testing techniques: ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) measurements to estimate the static elastic modulus of stones, Schmidt rebound hammer (SRH) tests to estimate the compressive strength of stones, and the mortar penetrometer (MP) tests to estimate the compressive strength of mortar. The measurements indicated poor mortar quality, which may have expedited failures. Using established correlations, various other important material parameters (e.g. mortar cohesion and homogenized masonry strength) are derived. It is envisioned that the damage observations and the material measurements in this article will inform detailed modeling efforts on the behavior of historic masonry buildings during the earthquakes