Out-of-Plane Strength of Confined Masonry Walls

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a study on the out-of-plane behavior of confined masonry walls. Six full-scale walls were tested in a laboratory under incremental uniform pressures. Walls with different aspect ratios, slenderness ratios, and in-plane stiffness of confining elements were considered. The spring-strut method was developed in this work to determine the out-of-plane strength of the walls. Experimental out-of-plane strengths are compared with those obtained with analytical models based on this spring-strut method, the yield line method, the failure line method, and the compressive strut method. Based on the experimental results, for walls with similar geometry, the out-plane strength depends mainly on the in-plane stiffness of the confining elements. From the comparison between experimental and analytical results, the out-of-plane strengths are well predicted with the model based on the spring-strut method, are underestimated with that based on the yield and failure line methods, and...