A New Method for Reducing Earthquake Casualties in Poor Performance Masonry Buildings

The objective ofthis paper is to present a new methodfor protecting the lives ofresidentsin catastrophic earthquake failures of unreinforced masonry buildings by introducing some saferooms within the buildings. the main idea is that occupants can seek refuge within the safe roomsas soon as the earthquake ground motions are felt. the information obtained from the historicalground motions happened in seismic zones around the globe expresses the lack ofenough safety ofmasonry buildings against earthquake. for this potentially important reason, an attempt has beenmade to create some cost-effective seismic-resistant areas in some parts of the existing masonrybuildings, which are called safe rooms. the practical method for creating these areas andincreasing the occupant safety ofthe buildings is to install some prefabricated steelframes in someof their rooms or in their halls. these frames do not carry any service loads before earthquake.however, ifa near field seismic event happens and the load bearing walls ofthe building destroy,some parts of its floors, which are in the safe areas, will fall on the roof of the installed frames;consequently, the occupants who have sheltered in the safe rooms will survive. this paper expressesthe experimental and theoretical work executed on the steel structures ofthe safe rooms for bearingthe shock and impact loads. finally, it was concluded that both the strength and displacementcapacity of the steel frames were adequate to accommodate the distortions generated by seismicloads and aftershocks properly: