The paper summarizes research on the out-of-plane behavior of unreinforced masonry bearing walls in buildings subjected to earthquake motions. Results from a set of shake table tests revealed that, in general, the walls performed very well despite the intensity of the base motion and the slenderness of the wall. Experimental results are compared with those simulated using SDOF and MDOF computational models. The validated models are useful for establishing that permissible limits on wall slenderness as prescribed by current seismic guidelines (FEMA356) can be increased. A two-degree-of-freedom model is introduced as a simple tool for dynamic stability analysis of unreinforced masonry walls.
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