Keywords: unreinforced masonry, contained underground explosions, seismic capacity, low rise structures, finite element model, simulation earthquake.

Masonry structures constitute a substantial part of the world’s building stock. Consequently, studying the behaviour of masonry structures subjected to gravity loading and lateral loading remains a topic of great interest among researchers. Masonry has proved to have high resistance to gravity loads but to have a lower resistance to earthquake loading and several experimental and numerical techniques have been used to evaluate the seismic capacity of masonry buildings. The research presented here provides details of the lateral load resistance behaviour of an unreinforced masonry building subjected to contained underground explosions designed to simulate the effect of seismic ground motion. In order to correlate experimental and numerical results finite element models were employed. It was found that low rise brick masonry buildings, even without special seismic resistant features and reinforcement, were able to survive moderate to high ground shaking provided minimum standards of material, geometry and interconnectivity of masonry structural elements were maintained. Furthermore, as an alternative to costly shaking table testing, contained underground explosions could be used as a useful tool for evaluating the seismic capacity of low rise buildings.

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