Quasi-static, cyclic loading tests of RAC brick masonry walls strengthened by basalt textile reinforced concrete

Abstract

This study experimentally evaluated the performance of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls, with and without basalt textile reinforced concrete (BTRC) strengthening, under quasi-static in-plane lateral loading tests. Five half-scaled specimens were constructed using recycled aggregate concrete (RAC) bricks, including unreinforced and BTRC reinforced walls. The first URM wall served as a control specimen, while the remaining four specimens featured varying strengthening configurations, achieved by changing the number of textile layers (two and four) in the BTRC overlay and the strengthening patterns (single and double side). The failure modes, axial deformation behavior, lateral resistance, deformability, stiffness degradation, energy dissipation, and equivalent viscous damping of the tested walls were examined. BTRC strengthening altered the failure mode of URM walls from diagonal cracking accompanied by rocking to rocking and slight shear sliding, thereby maintaining the integrity of the wall at large lateral displacements. Increasing the textile layer enhanced lateral resistance and deformability. Applying a BTRC overlay to a single side of the URM wall yielded satisfactory improvements, with even greater efficiency observed when an equal amount of textiles was evenly applied on both sides. Finally, by taking the contributions of vertical and horizontal fiber yarns into account, a new model involving different failure modes was proposed to estimate the ultimate lateral resistance of BTRC-strengthened masonry walls, showing good agreement with experimental results.