Out-of-plane behavior of dry-stack brick masonry walls

Abstract

As a result of the combination of the complex behavior of masonry buildings with insufficient material quality and lack in engineering calculations, a large number of damages has been observed in the earthquakes that occurred in recent years. Therefore, a realistic understanding of the behavior of masonry walls and buildings is necessary to construct seismic-resistant structures. Since masonry walls have many variables, performing experiments in which each variable is present at the same time will make it difficult to understand the behavior. For these reasons, considering the out-of-plane failures that are frequently mentioned in recent earthquakes, in this study, variables in dry-stack brick masonry buildings such as the aspect ratio of the wall (2, 1.33, and 1), the presence of the transverse walls (2, 1, and 0), and the openings in the walls (door and/or window) were taken into account separately. Eighteen different wall configurations were designed, and a total of 48 dry-stack walls having U-shape, L-shape, and I-shape in plan were tested by a specially constructed tilting table setup to determine their out-of-plane behavior. From the test results, it was found that lateral load capacity of the U-shaped walls without openings increased as the aspect ratio (L/H) decreased. No change in capacity was observed in L- and I-shaped walls when the aspect ratio was reduced from 2 to 1. Door and/or window openings were found to affect only the L-shaped walls. In addition, it was determined that failure patterns were affected from the aspect ratio and the presence of the openings.