Seismic Performance of Masonry Building

Abstract

The frequent occurrence of huge earthquake in the recent years results catastrophic losses to the people’s life and property, which is mainly caused by the devastation of many buildings. The Tangshan Earthquake (Ms 7.8,1976) and Wenchuan Earthquake (Ms 8.0,2008) should be mentioned here for the destructive influence on the development of China in the recent ages(Housner & Xie, 2002; Liu & Zhang,2008; Wang,2008). After the trial version of seismic design code as TJ 11-74, the Chinese seismic design code was published first in 1978 (as TJ 11-78), revised in 1989 (as GBJ 11-89) , 2000 (as GB 50011-2001) and 2010 (as GB 50011-2010). The minor earthquake, moderate earthquake and major earthquake are concerned in the seismic fortification. The moderate earthquake is defined to be of local fortification intensity. The minor earthquake means the frequent earthquake, whose intensity is about 1.5 degree lower, while the major earthquake means the rare earthquake, whose intensity is about 1 degree higher. The exceeding probability during 50 years as f P , the maximum acceleration of ground max a and the maximum coefficient of horizontal earthquake action as max  for local fortification intensity 7 are summarized in Table 1. It is seen that the relative major earthquake action, which is defined as the ratio of major earthquake action and minor earthquake action is 6.3 for local fortification intensity 7.