Experimental investigation on cyclic behavior of non-structural masonry walls strengthened with bed joint reinforcement and textile-reinforced concrete

One of the main damages of the nonstructural masonry walls during an earthquake is its instability and collapse on the combination of deformation at the in-plain direction caused by lateral inter-story drift of structures and out-of-plane inertial forces applied to the wall because of earthquake acceleration. In most of the researches, only one of these actions was investigated, or their interactions were not directly investigated.
In this research, a combination of in-plane and out-of-plane loadings was carried out, and the effect of reinforcing on the nonstructural walls by using fiber mesh reinforced mortar and bed joint rebar has been investigated.
For this purpose, three wall specimens with scale of 1 to 1 were made of Leca blocks. Walls were subjected to a combination of in-plane cyclic loading and out-of-plane loading. The results showed that nonstructural walls, without reinforcement, failed under out-of-plain force in low in-plain drift, and the test process was stopped. On the other hand, strengthening the nonstructural wall with fiber mesh reinforced concrete caused an increase of 15% and 54% in the drift ratio related to the reduction of the wall resistance and the maximum in-plane force compared to the nonstructural wall, which was strengthened with bed joint reinforcement.