Fracture Mechanics of Masonry Panel for In-Plane Loading

Abstract

The major earthquake occurred in India (Bhuj 2001) indicates that the collapse of masonry buildings are mostly because of in- plane and out-of-plane behaviour, especially because of the inadequate junctions between the perpendicular walls. It is necessary to understand the behavior of masonry wall under lateral load so that proper mitigation measures can be applied to existing buildings for retrofitting and to set the design guidelines for the new construction. An experimental research has been carried out on scaled masonry wall panels for in-plane loading. Several series of unreinforced masonry walls (C1-C6) of clay brick panel and (F1 – F6) of flyash brick panel of size 1m x1m x 0.23m were constructed with cement flyash mortar and were tested under constant vertical load and lateral in-plane load. Later, strengthened masonry walls with reinforced woven wire mesh were tested with the same geometry and boundary conditions. The force-displacement curves were obtained for the brick panels and their behaviour were studied for the unreinforced and reinforced brick masonry walls.