Out-of-plane strengthening of unreinforced masonry walls using textile reinforced mortar added short polyvinyl alcohol fibers

Abstract

Textile reinforced mortar (TRM) is a promising composite that exhibites typical multiple cracking behaviors. Short polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) fibers were added to a TRM matrix to increase its tensile strength and toughness and prevent the external matrix from detaching from the composite overlay in the experiments. Six groups of uniaxial tensile specimens were fabricated to investigate the tensile behaviors of the improved TRM composite. A group of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls and five groups of URM walls strengthened with the optimized composite were tested to study the out-of-plane behaviors. The results indicate that the ultimate strength of the composite significantly increased with the reinforcing ratio of carbon textiles. Detachment of the external matrix was not observed during all the tests. The deformation ability, bearing capacity and energy dissipation capacity of the strengthened specimens improved significantly. Finally, analytical models related to the failure modes of strengthened walls were proposed to predict the bearing capacity of strengthened walls.