Twin lintel belt in steel for seismic strengthening of brick masonry buildings

A single-room, single-storey full-scale brick masonry building with precast RC roofing system was tested thrice under displacement controlled lateral cyclic loading, to assess the effectiveness of the basic repair and seismic strengthening techniques. Initially, the virgin building specimen was loaded laterally to failure. In the second stage, the damaged building was repaired by stitching across the cracks, and tested under the same lateral loading. In the third stage, the twice-damaged structure was repaired once more by stitching and strengthened by twin lintel belt in steel and vertical corner reinforcement, and re-tested. The building strengthened bytwin lintel belt in steel showed about 28% higher strength under lateral loading than the virgin building.