EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ON THE RETROFITTING OF DAMAGED HOLLOW BRICK MASONRY HOUSES USING A FERROCEMENT LAYER

Abstract

An experimental study on a hollow brick masonry house with and without a ferrocement layer was conducted to investigate the effects of retrofit on damaged houses using the ferrocement layer. Two specimens of the hollow brick masonry house with a scale 1/4 of the actual size (104 cm x 104 cm x 110 cm) were prepared. The first specimen (B1) is a hollow brick house without retrofitting and mortar plastering tested to suffer heavy damage. In contrast, the second specimen (B2) is a brick wall house retrofitted using a ferrocement layer with a bandage system on both sides of the specimen wall. Both specimens were tested on a shaking table of 304 cm x 190 cm with a load variation of 0.3 g – 1 g. The first test aims to make the B1 specimen severely damaged, in which the heavy damage occurs when the input load is 0.6 g with an additional evenly distributed load of 200 kg. After testing, the cracked B1 specimen was repaired and retrofitted using a ferrocement layer with a bandage system. The second test was carried out on the retrofitted B1 and B2 specimens. The test result shows that no visible damage was observed on both specimens up to a variation of the input load of 1 g with an additional uniform load of 500 kg. This result proves that the retrofitting method using the ferrocement layer with a bandage system significantly improves the seismic behavior of hollow brick houses such that this method can be applied for retrofitting the damaged hollow brick houses after an earthquake.