抄録
Stone masonry houses are the most common type of construction in the Alpine Himalayan Belt across Pakistan, India and Nepal. However, the seismic resistance of these houses is highly questionable if constructed without any form of lateral support In this paper, the effectiveness of wooden bond beams as a retrofit solution has been examined. Dry stone masonry houses have been modeled by finite element method considering stones as linear solid and interfaces as joint elements. The joints are allowed to open and slide satisfying the Mohr-Coulomb criteria. To calibrate the values used in the numerical modeling an experiment using a small scale wall made of wooden blocks was shaken in small custom made table. The corresponding parameters which showed good agreement with experimental results were taken as inputs for the non linear dynamic analyses of various model houses. The results showed that wooden bond beams can be an effective technique for upgrading low strength masonry homes in low seismicity regions
