Comparative Analysis on the Seismic Behavior of Combined RC-Masonry Buildings

Abstract

Since the early 20th century combined RC-masonry buildings have become more common in European, Mediterranean, and Southern America countries. Despite the diffusion of this combined building typology, the international guidelines have not followed building transformation evolutions and, in particular, for combined RC-masonry buildings, nowadays, international guidelines are not exhaustive to deal with specific issues of this building typology. Although there is a well-established background focused on the nonlinear analysis of masonry structures and RC frames, the knowledge of numerical and experimental criteria for the study of interaction effects in combined RC-masonry buildings is limited. In this paper, nonlinear static analyses (pushover analyses) on three-dimensional combined RC-masonry buildings have been performed to obtain capacity curves of single-resistant systems and of the whole building. The results confirm the code guidelines for the design of new combined RC-masonry buildings and provide interesting insights about the seismic behavior of combined RC-masonry buildings obtained from the rehabilitation of original masonry structures.