Strengthening of Traditional Mud Houses on Response to Earthquake

Earthquake is an unexpected natural disaster that is unforeseeable and several earthquakes have been faced in Bangladesh with a magnitude of more than 6 in Richter scale in recent years. Non engineered houses are very common in rural area. Mudhouse is a typical house pattern among the non-engineered houses. The earthquake effect in conventional mud houses is a great concern. These houses are susceptible to earthquake damage due to some attributes of materials consisting of less stiffness, brittleness and poor bonding between the units. The present study deals with the strengthening of such houses using timber reinforcement with definite proportion contemplating the mud wall sizes and strengthening the walls by allowing some additional materials as reinforcements. Arrangements of reinforcement were followed in such a way that they would not require skilled labour and much cost. A finite element application STAAD-Pro was adopted to execute the required analysis of unreinforced and reinforced models considering both single story and double story. A series of analyses incorporating linear static and linear dynamic analyses were conducted to comprehend the actual response of models. Investigations from analyses depict that timber reinforcements impart greater stiffness and strength against overturning which increases the frequency of the structure and diminishes the lateral displacements to a good extent. The output from analyses includes lateral displacements, frequency, time-dependent displacements and time-dependent acceleration which depict the positive behaviour of reinforced mud houses. Such an arrangement of reinforcement can be a good choice to subside the detrimental effect of the earthquake.