Out-Of-Plane Cyclic Testing of Tall Reinforced Masonry Walls

Abstract eng:
In the framework of the DISWall research project, funded by the European Commission, innovative construction systems, based on the use of perforated clay units and aimed at building mainly tall, load bearing reinforced masonry walls for one-storey industrial and commercial buildings, were developed. In these cases, very often buildings are provided with deformable roofs, made with prefabricated elements or glulam beams. In the case of seismic actions, deformable roofs are not able to redistribute horizontal actions to in-plane walls. Walls orthogonal to seismic load direction can be tentatively considered as cantilevers, with vertical load applied at the top and horizontal out of plane load, due to the seismic action associated to the masses of both roof and wall itself. For this structural configuration, two real scale frames, composed by two parallel reinforced masonry walls, 6 m in height, vertically loaded by steel/concrete slab, were built and subjected to cyclic tests, by applying horizontal loads at the top slab level. The aim was studying tall walls’ behaviour under out-of-plane loads and P-∆ effects. In the present contribution, results of experimental tests and analysis of bending moments are presented.

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