Local wisdom to a sustainable non-engineered brick building

With the increase of wealth, people tend to modernize their houses by replacing the traditional wooden house to brick building, unfortunately most of these “modern non-engineered building” collapsed during earthquake, while the traditional buildings remain undamaged. In previous studies, the Authors have shown that the strength of the traditional building was in the construction of the columns which were not fixed to the ground but rested on top of flat stones, hence simulating friction base dampers.
In this study a typical non-engineered brick building is used as a prototype, it is also assumed that this building is built properly. Two types of building are considered, the first one has its tie beams anchored to the foundation. While in the second one, the tie beams are not anchored to the foundation, allowing the building to slide thus simulating friction damper. Both non-engineered brick buildings are subjected to spectrum consistent earthquake excitations with several return periods. The prototype building with anchors is treated as pinned on the anchor locations, while the one without anchor is treated as friction base isolation. A third building assuming no infilling brick wall is also analyzed as a comparison. The result shows that assuming there are no damages on the wall due to load perpendicular to the wall (face load), the two buildings can stand to earthquake with a return period of 500 and 2500 year, however the one with pinned base suffers some small damages. It is worth to note that the building with friction base attracts only 66% of the total base shear of the one with pinned base.