Comprehensive Consideration of the Influence of Openings in Walls and Type of Floors in the Visual Assessment of Seismic Resistance of Brick Masonry Buildings

The article presents the results of the analysisof existing systems for visual assessment of seismicresistance of masonry buildings. Having analysedthe existing methods of visual assessment of masonrybuildings, it was found that they do not allow tofully assess the current state of buildings. The visualassessment method under development, allows totake into account such important factors as theconfiguration and location of openings in the walls,as well as the impact of the type and design of thefloors.Specifically, it is true that the strength andload-bearing capacity of brick walls decreases withincreasing opening size, but the specific relationshipbetween the lateral strength of walls and thepercentage of opening depends on the analysismethod used and the location of the opening. Thelocation of openings in masonry walls affects theirin-plane load-bearing capacity. For walls with thesame opening configuration, improper shape orplacement can result in reduced lateral strengthand shear capacity. The impact of the type and typeof floor, especially its stiffness and symmetry, hasa significant impact on the overall stability of thebuilding during seismic actions.During the analysis, methods for visual assessmentof buildings in seismic regions of different countrieswere considered. Such methods are widely usedin many countries of the world: FEMA 154 (USA),Swiss, New Zealand, Indian, Turkish systems.This procedure requires a preliminary survey ofbuildings to assess the following aspects: presence ofirregularities, year of construction, number of floors,presence or absence of flexible floors, etc. Basedon the analysis of the applied global experience ofusing RVS systems, it turned out that according tothe American Fema 154 and many other foreignmethods, the visual assessment does not take intoaccount the influence of the floor type, as wellas openings in the load-bearing walls and theirconfiguration. Therefore, it was decided that the useof these foreign systems in Ukraine is inappropriateand it is necessary to develop our own system thatcan be applied both in Ukraine and in countries withsimilar building traditions where such systems arenot available.Based on the results of the analysis, conclusionswere drawn about the need to take into account theconfiguration of the openings and their location, aswell as the type of floors, and the development ofa method for rapid visual assessment of the seismicresistance of masonry buildings was proposed.