Abstract：The earthquake damage of self-built single-bay masonry buildings in the disaster area of “4·20” Lushan earthquake was very serious. A 1/6 scaled model, which was a three-story single-bay structure without structural columns, was selected as a typical case and carried out with the shaking table test. The seismic response characteristics and failure mechanism of the structure were studied. Besides, the crack development, vibration frequency, damping ratio, peak acceleration amplification coefficient and strain were analyzed. The results showed that the model was in an elastic state under the small earthquake of 7.5degree, the shear cracks occurred on the wall of the window under the small earthquakes of 8-degree, the shear horizontal cracks occurred under the large earthquakes of 6-degrees, and the structure was damaged under the medium seismic of 7.5-degree. There was a resonance amplification effect under the action of Feixianguan wave in Lushan earthquake, and the peak acceleration coefficient of the structure was more than twice that of El wave and artificial wave. Furthermore, the front cracks of the model structure were more than the back cracks, and the horizontal seam in the bottom layer was the key to the collapse of the structure. And the structure showed the characteristic of brittle failure, which was no obvious deformation before the damage. As shown in the research results, it was proposed that the structure system was extremely unreasonable. Finally, the resonance effect was one of the important reasons for the heavy damage of the single-bay masonry buildings in the Lushan earthquake.
