Experimental Test of Masonry Wallets Retrofitted by ABACA Fiber Reinforced Mortar

Abstract

Unreinforced masonry (URM) houses are very weak against earthquake and many of them were collapsed or heavily damaged and killed many people during past large earthquakes, such as 2015 Nepal earthquake, 2010 Haiti earthquake, 2009 Padang earthquake, etc. Most URM buildings are built with little deliberation of seismic loading, and so these are not capable of resisting the seismic ground motion, which caused damage and collapse of the buildings. Based on these circumstances, retrofitting of URM structures is the prominent issue for earthquake disaster mitigation, especially for reducing human casualty. For this reason, there are many kinds of retrofitting materials and methods have been developed and used to strengthen the URM houses, such as Fiber Reinforced Polymers (FRP), steel mesh cage, surface treatment using Shotcrete, post-tensioning using rubber tires, etc. They can contribute somehow to increase strength and modulus for structural applications. However, they are relatively expensive and not available in many parts of the world, which is of prime importance in the third world countries. Therefore, in this paper, a new retrofitting material that is Abaca Fiber Reinforced Mortar (FRM) will be proposed. Abaca fiber, which is known as a natural material and available in local community, is used as a reinforcement in cement lime mortar. The experimental method used in this research consists of the tensile test of Abaca fiber, the in-plane and out of plane method. Based on the experimental test results, FRM methods have high potency to be used as retrofitting method of URM houses, due to its bigger deformation capacity and ease on application.