EXPERIMENTAL AND BEARING CAPCITY STUDIES ON THE SEISMIC BEHAVIOR OF UNREINFORCED MASONRY WALLS STRENGTHENED WITH HDC LAYERS

To investigate the seismic behavior of unreinforced masonry walls strengthened with high ductile concrete (HDC) layers, three brick masonry walls strengthened with HDC layers, one brick masonry wall strengthened with steel-meshed cement mortar, and one brick masonry wall served as the reference specimen were designed. The failure pattern, hysteretic characteristics and energy dissipation capacity were studied through the quasi-static tests. The test results show that the HDC layers can provide a constraining effect for the wall, effectively delay the generation of cracks, change the failure mode and improve the lateral strength and ductility of the wall. After being strengthened with a single HDC layer, the cracking load and energy dissipation capacity of the wall is obviously higher than that strengthened with steel-meshed cement mortar and the bearing capacity decreases slowly. A calculation method is proposed to estimate the ultimate lateral strength of strengthened masonry walls and the accuracy of the method is validated by the test results.