A full-scale, two-story, fully-grouted, reinforced masonry shear wall system will be tested on the NEES outdoor shake table at the Englekirk Structural Engineering Center of UCSD. This will be the second and also the last structure to be tested on the shake table in a research project sponsored by NIST under an ARRA Measurement Science and Engineering Grant. The project is to study the seismic performance of fully-grouted reinforced masonry shear-wall structures, and to develop improved design methodologies, detailing requirements, and analytical methods for the design and performance assessment of these structures. Current design methods and code requirements for reinforced masonry structures are not entirely rational and practical for low-rise buildings that have walls with many openings. The first structure tested on the table was a three-story wall system designed according to current ASCE/SEI 7 and MSJC provisions. The second structure has shear-critical wall elements and is designed with a displacement-based approach to circumvent the deficiencies of current codes for this kind of systems.
The shake-table tests have been made possible with support from the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program of NSF, which funds the operations and maintenance of the Large High-Performance Outdoor Shake Table at the UCSD NEES site.
Investigators
| PI | Benson Shing | UC San Diego |
| PI | Richard Klingner | University of Texas, Austin |
| PI | David McLean | Washington State University |
| Graduate Student | Farhad Ahmadi | University of Texas, Austin |
| Graduate Student | Marios Mavros | University of California, San Diego |
| Other Collaborator | Andreas Stavridis | University of Texas, Arlington |