Report # 34 : Buildings with hollow clay tile load-bearing walls and precast concrete floor slabs

by Ulugbek T. Begaliev, Svetlana Uranova

Buildings of this type are characterized with load-bearing masonry walls and precast concrete floors. Typical buildings of this type are 3 to 4 stories high and they are characterized with two longitudinal walls and several cross walls. There are many existing buildings of this type in Kyrgyzstan, and most of them were constructed in the 1960s. This construction practice was banned after 1966, due to the code provisions that required restriction of the size of the cores in hollow clay tiles (blocks). The exterior walls are made of hollow clay masonry tiles (blocks). In some cases there are two wall wythes: the exterior wythe made of hollow clay tiles and the interior wythe made of solid clay bricks. The floor system consists of precast reinforced concrete hollow core slabs. Buildings of this type were built in the areas with high seismic design intensity (8, 9 and higher on the MSK scale). This building type is considered to be rather vulnerable to seismic effects.

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