Investigation of damage limits under out-of-plane earthquake effects of walls in existing historical masonry structure in Turkey

Most of the historical masonry structures do not have structural elements that are forming a rigid diaphragm effect under earthquake actions, walls are high and unsupported lengths perpendicular to the planes are relatively large. Therefore, in URM buildings with aforementioned defects, walls partially or in some cases completely collapse, and the failure mode is dominated by the out-of-plane damage before any in-plane resistance occurs. In AFAD-UDAP-Ç-16-05 research project, which is being carried out in cooperation with Dokuz Eylül University Civil Engineering Department, and the Directorate General of Foundations; the primary goal was defined as to determine the damage limits leading to the loss of out-of-plane stability of those building walls. For this purpose, dynamic data were taken from the two perpendicularly intersected surrounding walls of historical İsabey Mosque which was built in İzmir / Selçuk in 1375 and the obtained data were evaluated by Operational Modal Analysis techniques and the dynamic character was estimated. In the scope of this thesis study, the obtained parameters were used to calibrate the ABAQUS finite element model. Nonlinear time-history analyses were conducted on the calibrated finite element models to determine damage limits of the wall. Moreover, the tendency of out-of-plane collapse of the wall using the kinematic approach is investigated and compared with the numerical analyses results.