The application of mechanism based and equivalent frame methods for the seismic assessment of URM terraced houses in Groningen

Since the 60’s the Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij (NAM) has been extracting gas from the province of Groningen in the Netherlands. This resulted into seismic activity. However, the buildings in Groningen are not designed to withstand any seismic loading. The assessment of the seismic behavior of the building stock of Groningen is required to verify whether a structure causes any life safety risk during an earthquake. In this thesis two main objectives are studied. Firstly, it is studied whether the simplified analysis approaches: Simplified Lateral Mechanism Analysis (SLaMA), as described in the NPR9998-2018, and the Equivalent Frame Method (EFM) as implemented into the software package 3Muri are able to describe the seismic behavior of an Unreinforced Masonry (URM) terraced house. Secondly, the influence of the geometry of the piers in a facade is assessed. Both the objectives are studied by means of two case studies. The first case study represents a typical but idealized URM structure of a terraced house from which the seismic capacity was determined in the TU Delft lab by cyclic pushover tests. The second case study concerns a specific two-storey URM terraced house located in Groningen. The case studies are characterized by large daylight openings, slender piers and a low lateral capacity into the x-direction.Civil Engineering | Building Engineerin