ASHOUR, AHMED1; HEEREMA, PAUL2; SHEDID, MARWAN3; EL-DAKHAKHNI, WAEL4

1) Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4L7, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: ashouraa@mcmaster.ca

2) Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4L7, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: heeremp@mcmaster.ca

3) Assistant Professor, Structural Engineering Department, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. E-mail: Marwan.shedid@eng.asu.edu.eg

4) Martini Mascarin and George Chair in Masonry Design, Dept. of Civil Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, L8S 4L7, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: eldak@mcmaster.ca

The traditional approach of designing buildings to meet the collapse prevention performance level under the maximum considered earthquake is now changing. It is now important to know the probability of reaching a specific damage level under a specific earthquake knowing the probability of its return period as discussed in FEMA P-58 [1]. As such, there is a need for effective tools to quantify the damage state at different building seismic performance levels. However, measuring the crack widths is challenging using the traditional measuring methods. In this study, Digital Image Correlation (DIC) crack width measurements technique was first validated against the data collected from conventional displacement transducers and then used to estimate the crack width and its distribution in a reinforced masonry building tested under quasi-static cyclic loading. The damage state for each wall is identified for each drift ratio and the results in general are promising in terms of adopting DIC methods in future studies.

Keywords: Building Tests, Crack Width Measurements, Digital Image Correlation, Performance Based Design, Reinforced Masonry, Seismic Design.