EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION ON SEISMIC BEHAVIOR OF DAMAGED BRICK MASONRY WALL STRENGTHENED WITH ECC SPLINT

Engineered Cementitious Composites (ECC) is a kind of building material which has characteristic of high strength, high ductility and strain hardening performance in tension. It has wide application prospects in the reinforced engineering. Based on the low-cyclic reversed loading test of 4 damaged brick wall which was strengthened by ECC and the comparison to another 4 specimens from related references, the failure mechanism, failure mode, hysteretic characteristics and deformability of brick walls strengthened by ECC splint were studied. The research shows that: 1) strengthened by ECC splint, the deformability and seismic performance of damaged brick wall are obviously improved; 2) it is an effective method to reinforce masonry structure because ECC splint can restrain its inner brick wall dramatically and provide significant improvement in the brittle fracture of brick wall; 3) improving the bond behavior of ECC splint and constructional column to ensure the shear transfer between them plays an important role in enhancing the overall performance of strengthened brick wall. A new technique of strengthening masonry structure is proposed based on this research, which is epected to have good prospect of promotion and application.