Evaluation of Seismic Capacity and Estimation of Earthquake Damage for Existing Unreinforced Masonry Building in Korea

In Seoul, more than 80 percent of residential buildings are constructed with unreinforced masonry(URM) buildings in early 1970 to 1990. In general, URM buildings have the advantages of reducing the construction time and easy to construction. However, URM buildings do not have enough strength against the lateral force. Moreover, low rise buildings have not adopted seismic designs, and for that reason a critical damage is expected with an earthquake. And also, the necessity of the seismic performance evaluation of existing building structures is raised through the Taiwan earthquake in 1999. The purpose of this study is to provide basic information for unreinforced masonry building in Korea by application of the proposed seismic evaluation method. In this study, seismic capacities of 50 existing unreinforced masonry buildings are evaluated based on the proposed method. Also, relationships of seismic capacities between Korean earthquake damage ratios of korean unreinforced masonry buildings are estimated. Results of this study were as follows; 1)Seismic retrofit was needed in Korean unreinforced masonry buildings. 2)Korean unreinforced masonry buildings were expected to have severe damage under the earthquake intensity level experienced in Japan.