Semi-confined unreinforced brick masonry

Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur recently found a solution for retrofitting old non-earthquake-resistant buildings with a technology that can prevent major damage to such buildings from earthquakes without compromising on their strength.

Details –

• Most buildings, technically called unreinforced masonry (URM), were not built using modern building codes. Thus they are much more likely to experience damage or collapse during an earthquake.
• SC-URBM can resolve the problem of spread of settlements in earthquake-prone areas with constructions that have been built without following earthquake-preventive building codes.
• SC-URBM can significantly enhance the energy dissipation capacity and ductility of the retrofitted building without compromising its strength. Hence such buildings would have resulting superior performance in comparison to URBM buildings during earthquakes.
• It involves embedding of reinforced concrete (RC) bands through the partial thickness of the wall and can be implemented or retrofitted in old buildings.