What you didn't already know about URM infills: Limiting drift vs identifying falling hazard in Downtown LA's Historic Core

摘要

A wave of new construction in the downtown Los Angeles area has helped to revitalize the antiquated Historic Core centered on Broadway. As ownership seeks to maintain the rustic feel of the historic buildings for adaptive reuse, the engineer is often left in a challenging position to meet both the client's demands and get approved by the building department. In order to address threats to life safety during an earthquake from falling hazard, structural engineers have resorted to stringent interstory drift limits to prevent excessive damage to the masonry infills at the perimeter facades of the buildings. The case study, a retrofit currently under construction, provides the example in which the application of more refined tools and recent experiment data described herein target the governing performance criteria in a more directly than current existing building guidelines. Findings from the study on the appropriate height-to-thickness ratios and out-of-plane infill strength formulas may surprise some.