The investigation of the performances of shearwall joints in the retrofitting of masonry structures with outside shearwalls

It is known that the 95% of Turkey is under severe earthquake risk. Life and economical loses affect negatively not only rural areas but also urban areas. Earthquakes affect reinforced concrete, steel and masonry structures. Masonry structures which are easily constructed, economical and having the advantage of being able to be constructed with local materials are being constructed with conventional methods in Turkey. For this reason safety of masonry structures against earthquake damage, behavior of masonry structures under earthquake loading and determination of damages after an earthquake are very important. Studies performed in this subject were shown that masonry structures become brittle due to the persistence of fractures.In this study it was aimed to develop a method in which precast shear walls are applied to masonry walls. In this method shearwalls are designed to meet the earthquakes loads. In the application of the proposed method to masonry structures, performance of connections tought to increase by connecting shear walls to slabs and shear walls to foundations with anchors. Two different connection details of shear wall-slab, shear wall-shear wall connections were modeled and tested.As a result of experiments 297 kN and 255 kN failure loads were obtained from first and second experiments respectively. In addition earthquake calculation of a sample masonry structure was performed and applications of outside shear walls were suggested for the retrofitting of this masonry structure.