Funding: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mauerwerks- und Wohnungsbau and Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik
Verbesserte seismische Nachweiskonzepte für Mauerwerksbauten in Deutschland – Improved seismic design concepts for masonry structures in Germany
The application of this verification concept has the effect that, already today, the stability of buildings with common floor plans in the lowest german earthquake zone cannot be proven anymore. This situation is problematic for the masonry industry and will aggravate further with the introduction of new seismic activities maps. It therefore follows the necessity to provide easily applicable and validated verification methods, which are able to make use of existing ductile reserves.
The original situation described above is the reason for the german masonry industry to try to substantially improve the present linear verification concept through a research project consisting of two parts. In the first part of the project the Chair of Structural Analysis and Dynamics of the RWTH Aachen University in cooperation with the University in Pavia are examining in detail three modern representative masonry constructions in the region of Emilia Romagna with a linear and non-linear verification methods. The chosen buildings showed after the earthquake series in 2012 almost no damages, even though the soil accelerations had been significantly above the normative level they had been designed for. The objective of the first part of the project is to indicate the high safety margins of modern masonry buildings with the application of force-based calculation concepts as well as to validate the non-linear calculation approaches. The first part of the project is financed by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Mauerwerks- und Wohnungsbau e.V. (DGfM). The second part of the project aims to make the quantified safety margins from the examined buildings available for the construction practice through extended calculation concepts and is funded by Deutsches Institut für Bautechnik (DIBt). The results of the research project are made accessible by the standardisation of the building regulation.