Abstract
Masonry construction is a very attractive and popular construction in different continents of the world. The risks associated with unreinforced masonry (URM) constructions are vulnerable to the earthquake. The numbers of casualties related to masonry constructions were always reported in the past earthquakes. It is important to use the cheap and locally available material to enhance seismic performance of masonry structures. Polypropylene band (PP-band) retrofitting has been proposed as the retrofitting method for masonry structures in many under developing countries. For this method, the PP-band is connected at every intersections of the mesh on the masonry wall. If we can reduce the number of connecting points of PP-band mesh, this method will be more effective. In this paper, we have tested the effects of reduced numbers of connecting points of PP-band mesh by 1/4 scale-models on shake table test. The fully connected (PPF) and the non-connected cases (PPN) were compared. The PPN model showed the effectiveness as for the retrofitting method.
