Ingham, JWootherspoon, LIsmail, Najif2012-06-242012http://hdl.handle.net/2292/19106Approximately two thirds of the fatalities caused by earthquakes in the last one hundred years have resulted due to the collapse of unreinforced masonry (URM) buildings. Poor performance of URM buildings was also observed in recent earthquakes such as the 2005 Pakistan earthquake, the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake and the 2010/2011 Canterbury (New Zealand) earthquake sequence. The New Zealand URM building stock consists of mostly pre-1931 structures, with many of these buildings contributing to the country's architectural heritage. It was revealed in a recent survey that many of New Zealand's URM buildings have insufficient capacity to endure even a moderate earthquake but the concerns of heritage preservation makes demolition of these historic URM buildings undesirable, which results in seismic retrofit being necessary. Many seismic retrofit solutions have already been implemented in New Zealand, but the experimental database on their seismic behaviour is scarce. Consequently, the research reported here was undertaken to investigate the performance of URM walls when seismically retrofitted using three strengthening techniques, which were selected after an extensive literature review. The selected strengthening techniques are (i) unbonded posttensioning using threaded steel rods and sheathed greased strands, (ii) near surface mounting of high strength twisted stainless steel bars (NSM-TS), and (iii) surface application of polymer textile reinforced mortar (TRM). The selected seismic strengthening techniques were adapted for New Zealand URM buildings, and the performance of URM walls seismically strengthened using the adapted strengthening techniques was investigated by performing numerous full scale laboratory based and field tests. Based on the results of the experimental program empirical design equations were derived and checked for accuracy by comparing with current design equations and with experimental results. Finally, case studies were conducted to demonstrate application of these strengthening techniques for the seismic retrofit of historic URM buildings.Items in ResearchSpace are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated. Previously published items are made available in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.https://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/docs/uoa-docs/rights.htmhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/nz/ThesisCopyright: The authorQ112890087