Semi-confined Unreinforced Brick Masonry

Recently, researchers from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, developed a solution for retrofitting old non-earthquake-resistant buildings with a technology that can prevent major damage to such buildings from earthquakes without compromising on their strength. The technology is called semi-confined unreinforced brick masonry (SC-URBM).

Context

• Historically, most buildings, technically called unreinforced masonry (URM), were not built using modern building codes. Thus they are much more likely to experience damage or collapse during an earthquake.
• URM buildings have been widely adopted worldwide due to inexpensive and locally available construction materials.
• Just like in many developing countries located in earthquake-prone regions, unreinforced brick masonry (URBM) ....