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Affordable seismic strengthening of stone masonry walls: experimental validation using an in-situ testing approach
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DOI：10.1016/j.ijdrr.2026.106204.png)
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Abstract
En 中文
In the Himalayan region, stone masonry with mud mortar is a widely used construction method for buildings, due to the simplicity of the technique and the abundance of materials. This is particularly applicable in Nepal, where over 80% of the land is mountainous. The 2015 Gorkha Earthquake led to significant damage to 60% of these stone masonry school buildings, thus revealing their seismic vulnerability. This extend of seismic damage poses the urgent need for a comprehensive study of the seismic performance and lateral load capacity of this construction typology, coupled with experimental validation of seismic retrofitting methods to facilitate an increase of the seismic resilience of the existing building inventory. Retrofitting stone masonry using Welded Wire Mesh (WWM) has been incorporated into national-level guidelines as a recommended practice. However, there is a lack of experimental verification on the efficiency of this method for the seismic retrofitting of stone masonry buildings. This research addresses this gap by conducting a series of full-scale wall tests on the out-of-plane load and displacement capacity of stone masonry walls in Kathmandu, under the Seismic Safety and Resilience of Schools in Nepal (SAFER) project, funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), UK. The study utilized locally available materials, such as galvanized steel wire mesh for the seismic retrofitting of the walls. Three sets of monotonic lateral load tests were performed on stone masonry walls, including two unretrofitted and four retrofitted walls, using a low-cost testing setup. The experimental results demonstrated that the retrofitting increased 3.5 times the out-of-plane lateral load-bearing capacity of the walls, while also doubling their displacement capacity compared to the unretrofitted walls. Furthermore, the failure mode of the walls was substantially modified after retrofitting, with the retrofitted walls exhibiting smaller, more evenly distributed cracks rather than larger, localized ones. Based on the design of the above community-driven testing configurations, this study provides a practical and cost-effective approach for seismic testing and seismic retrofitting of stone masonry walls in developing countries, thus enabling the extraction of valuable experimental data in regions where such information is scarce. The findings facilitate the in-situ experimental validation of low-cost seismic retrofitting techniques and provide design recommendations for their application, thus paving the way for the implementation of seismic risk mitigation strategies in developing countries.
Keywords:
Stone masonry
cost-efficient seismic testing
low-cost seismic retrofitting
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