Seismic Rehabilitation of Historical Masonry Vaults using FRPs - A Case Study

Collapse of non-engineered historical buildings in seismically active regions of Iran has been reported widely. Masonry dome and vault, which were built by adobe or bricks with clay, lime/clay or chalk/clay mortar have often been used in these buildings m cover the roof. Conservation of historical heritage may become necessary in order to improve their seismic resistance. In this paper, potential failure of a heritage brick vault located in Yazd city, Iran built in 1935 is investigated under lateral loads. In this building, the piers were built by adobe masonry whereas the roof vault was made up of clay bricks with chalk/clay mortar. A nonlinear finite element model is used in the investigation in which the masonry is modelled as an anisotropic continuum using smeared material models. The material properties of continuum masonry are determined by testing. Finally, the brick vault is strengthened using CFRP sheets at extrados with different architecture and the failure mechanisms of the structure before and after strengthening are compared. Results show that when the vault is strengthened at extrados, the failure mechanism would improve to provide higher ultimate load capacities.