Bemessung von Mauerwerk bei Erdbebenbeanspruchung

Design of masonry structures for seismic loading.

In Central Europe many residential as well as small and medium office- and commercial buildings are built with masonry. Moreover, a major part of existing buildings also has been built in masonry. Typically, the masonry walls consist of unreinforced masonry. For this traditional way of building construction, the development of new national and international codes, especially Eurocode 6 and 8, has given rise to the question of the seismic resistance. Other than with reinforced concrete structures it is not possible to increase the resistance just by placing some more reinforcement. Placing reinforcement into masonry at all would mean a complete change of this traditional way of building so that a lot of advantages of unreinforced masonry might be lost. In this paper, following a brief presentation of the problem, an overview about research that has been conducted in this field during the past years shall be given. Furthermore, proposals for more realistic design checks as well as for developments which have influenced the design codes will be highlighted. In this regard, not only the bearing capacity of masonry cross sections is of importance but also the aspect of deformation capacity and the interaction of different structural members within a building.