Up-Gradation of Unreinforced Masonry Infill Square Reinforced Concrete Frame of Ferrocement Cover with External Prestressing to Cater Seismic Forces

Abstract

The existing URM buildings are subjected to seismic loads cause cracks and damaged the infill and bricks are comes out of frame and damage human beings. Hence these structures require appropriate retrofitting. This research investigates the Up-gradation of URM walls, through conducting RCC square frame compared with and without ferrocement covering for brick masonry. In this experiment load is applied on the square frame along with diagonal compression. In this experiment involved two types of specimens, one specimen treated with cement mortar plaster as conventional specimen (unreinforced masonry-URM) and another specimen (reinforced masonry with ferrocement and external steel rods as RM-S) is pre-strengthened using mesh (ferrocement covering), adopted steel fibre adopted at the junction of RCC Frame. Cement mortar plastering covering provided at both faces of brick infill with and without ferrocement covering. The diagonal load was applied on the RCC frame structure until the frame reaches its ultimate load. After the damaged occurred on the RCC frame, retrofitting is done on the URM and ferrocement RM structure, and then the load is applied diagonally again. The test results indicated that the retrofitting methodology increases the strength of the URM and that the RM-Swalls increase its stiffness. Due to the retrofitting technique we can avoid the demolition of old and historic building. Retrofitting specimen increases the strength about 40% for URM and 50% for RM-S respectively.