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“...identified to be non-engineered buildings. According to Gautam et al. [13] and Varum et al. [14], the non-engineered buildings are built spontaneously following traditional building practices, with little to no intervention by engineers and architects. In Nepal, most of the non-engineered RC buildings contain infill masonry walls made of clay bricks with cement mortar or, more typically, mud mortar. These buildings are characterized by low lateral strength, insufficient ductility, and poor materials and detailing, which increase considerably their seismic vulnerability as observed earlier in Nepal with thousands of these buildings collapsed [13, 14].
This manuscript presents a numerical study of an existing school building block that integrates the Tarun Ma Vi high school, located in the Balaju area of Kathmandu. This structure is representative of existing schools built around the country. Being a highly important class of buildings, it is essential to understand their behavior and assess...”
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“...their performance are presented and discussed in the next section.
4 Seismic Vulnerability Assessment of Proposed Retrofit Strategies
4,1 Retrofit Solutions: Critical Discussion
For the present study four different retrofit solutions are considered:
1. Introduction of infill masonry walls (IIMW): This solution aims to reduce the drifts in Storey 3, in the transversal direction. It is a simple intervention and easy to perform, with very short duration for the construction.
In this solution, the materials and properties defined for infill masonry walls used in the original structure, as summarized in Table 3, are used. Thus, two infill panels are added in Storey 3, in the direction of grid lines F and H shown in Fig. lb.
The main advantage of this solution is that it addresses the issue of the vertical irregularity of stiffness provided by the infill walls. However, the main disadvantage is on the impact of the functionality of the space. In the original building, the space where the walls are...”
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“...longitudinal reinforcing steel is 16-mm-diameter steel bars, while the transverse reinforcement corresponds to 8-mm-diameter reinforcing steel bars spaced at 125 mm on center, with two legs per face of the column, as shown in Fig. 11. Two different solutions were tested: (1) RC jacketing of all columns (RCI-TOT) and (2) RC jacketing of Storey 1 columns (RCI-GF).
3. Addition of steel braces (SB): The retrofit strategy using steel braces is not very common in Nepal, due to the high costs, lack of materials, and lack and skilled labor-associated use of steel. However, this enhanced seismic retrofit technique has proven their efficiency in past earthquakes [34],
The layout in plan and vertical distribution of the steel braces should be carefully analyzed to avoid inadequate stiffness irregularities that may cause undesired structural mechanisms [see Fig. 12), such as added torsion or even the soft-storey at other levels. The steel brace elements are usually connected to other steel parts, vertical...”
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