Reinforced composite masonry shear walls
The results of tests of reinforced composite masonry panels subjected to gravity and in-plane shear loads are discussed herein. Eleven walls were tested. Each of the walls was made from two wythes of brick-to-brick or brick-to-block, with a nominal 2-inch collar joint. In the first 10 walls, the collar joint was grouted and reinforced with either welded wire fabric or vertical and horizontal bars. For the last wall, vertical bars in the block openings were used as reinforcement and the collar joint was not grouted. The two wythes for the last wall were connected together using horizontal truss joint reinforcement in the bed mortar. Vertical load was applied first, followed by the in-plane horizontal load while the vertical load was held constant. The loads (either vertical or horizontal) were applied as distributed loads along the top of the wall, which was free to move. (The base of the wall was fixed to the floor.) The wall panels were approximately 4 feet wide, 6 feet high and 9 inches thick;The walls were also analyzed using the finite element technique, and the results were compared with the working stress design and the shear wall equation. A large-scale general purpose computer program developed by Swanson Analysis Systems Inc. of Houston, Pennsylvania (ANSYS) was used considering the wall as a cantilever beam supported at the bottom and free from the top. The two-dimensional plane stress elements were used with different mesh size. A proposed method of analysis is discussed herein;Conclusions and recommendations as a result of this research are discussed herein.
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