Diagonal compressive behavior of unreinforced masonry walls strengthened with textile reinforced mortar added with short PVA fibers

Abstract

Textile reinforced mortar (TRM) has been intensively researched over at last two decades. It is a composite consisting of textiles and inorganic matrix. The study presents an investigation on the diagonal compressive performances of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls strengthened with carbon and glass TRM composites which are added with short and water-dispersible polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers. Ten specimens were designed to study the effect of the reinforcement configuration (single/double sides), layers of textiles and types of textiles on the in-plane behaviors of masonry walls under diagonal compression tests. It included a reference specimen, four single-side strengthened specimens and five double-side strengthened specimens. The failure mode, shear stress–strain response and deformation capacity of specimens were presented and discussed in this paper. The results showed that the improved TRM composites could improve the deformation and bearing capacity of masonry walls. The bearing capacity was predicted based on different failure modes of specimens. Furthermore, two non-dimensional parameters (α and β) were proposed to compare the efficiency and enhancement ratio of different TRM composites reported in literatures and this paper. It indicated that the improved TRM composites reached a considerable efficiency in improving the bearing capacity.