Seismore resistant capacity and failure modes composed of confined masonry

Cuenca is a city of medium-high seismic threat, with at least two earthquakes of important intensity in the past. The built heritage of the city has a deficient seismic resistant potential. In this context, and attending to the most common topology of the city, a study of the seismic behavior of the walls composed of confined masonry is proposed as a project. Confined masonry buildings, in general, have proper behavior to permanent loads, however its operation to seismic loads is based on the mechanical properties of the masonry, degree of confinement and openings. In the case of openings, it has been observed that their location and size considerably affect the wall capacity. This project proposes a wall modeling strategy composed of confined wall modules (full and with openings) based on the full wall module model (MPLL). The objective is to simplify the behavior against lateral loads of the wall module confined with openings (MPCA), ignoring the explicit consideration of its localized failure modes. This modeling route has been explored mainly with the typology of reinforced concrete frame filled with masonry (close to that of confined masonry), based on experimental or simulation studies with finite elements. This project will be extended this modelization for MPCA to the case of confined masonry, based on a parametric study of simulations with finite elements.