Study on the damage potential to masonry structures of earthquake ground motions

In order to study the correlation between earthquake ground motion parameters and the response of masonry structures subjected to ground motions, fifteen ground motion parameters were divided into 4 kinds according to their property and the ground motion records were grouped into 3 teams based on the three factors, that is amplitude, spectra and duration, of ground motion. The correlation coefficient between the ductility of two masonry structures subjected to each group of ground motions and the corresponding ground motion parameters were calculated. Then the analysis and comparison of correlation coefficient was conducted and the result implies that the effective peak acceleration of ground motion can reflect the damage potential to high-rise masonry structure and PGA can reflect the damage potential to brittle structure with short period very well. Also, the energy parameters of ground motion have correlation with the low-rise masonry structure to some degree. While the duration parameter of ground motion almost has no correlation with the response of masonry structures subjected to earthquake ground motions.