Despite the fact that masonry is one of the oldest and most used building materials, the number of existing studies and experimental data, as well as the applicability of its results (i.e. extrapolation), are substantially lower than those available for much more recent materials, such as concrete or steel. Furthermore, currently in Europe, a large number of residential buildings belong to masonry typologies. These circumstances justify the study of the characteristics and behaviour of the masonry to guide studies on seismic vulnerability.
In particular, the Eixample district of Barcelona, in Spain, presents an urban park of functional housing made up 73% of unreinforced masonry structures, solved by means of load-bearing wall systems, without any consideration of seismic action and that, for the most part, exceed 100 years of useful life. These buildings, characteristics of Barcelona, have elements that differentiate them from other buildings of the same construction typology that can be found in other regions of Europe: 1) the number of floors significantly exceeds the average, being able to find buildings with up to 10 or 11 levels; 2) The buildings share dividing walls (e.g. lateral), thereby generating frameworks of buildings known as aggregates; 3) The properties and qualities of the different construction elements are closely linked to the production processes, not yet mechanized, of the time; 4) The level of construction techniques and the qualification of the workforce were very high.
In this work, numerical 3D models of isolated structural configurations (i.e. individual building) and in aggregate, of existing buildings have been made, in order to determine and compare the behaviour between the different structural configurations. The buildings have been modelled incorporating the variability of their mechanical parameters and the seismic demand has also been selected taking into account its uncertainty.
The structural analysis has been carried out using and comparing different non-linear static calculation procedures and using the incremental non-linear dynamic analysis as a reference. A discussion was carried out comparing the results and the degree of reliability of the different procedures used in relation to the typology of unreinforced masonry buildings. It can be concluded that the simplified methods (i.e. non-linear static) overestimate the damage corresponding to low values of PGA and underestimate the damage for higher values of PGA. Using different criteria, and including the probabilistic consideration of mechanical properties, as well as seismic demand, the foreseeable damage for these structures has been characterized by fragility functions and matrices and damage indices. A study of the correlation between the mechanical parameters and the observed damage is also provided, from which, a high correlation between the obtained results and the variables of interest, is observed, being the Young’s modulus, E, the variable with the highest correlation coefficients.
The common difficulties, in any work that involves large samples in relation to the amount of resources and computing time, have been solved through the design of adequate and sufficiently representative samples and by using current computational methods and tools, such as parallel and distributed computing.
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