Seismic Evaluation of Masonry Structures Strengthened with Reinforced Concrete Layers

What is it about?

Strengthening of masonry walls with reinforced concrete (or mortar) layers is a promising technique. The use of cement free mortars and new reinforcements promotes sustainability and compatibility with masonry, makes this technique even more interesting. Here, we discuss the seismic performance of masonry wall strengthened with this technique and present performance-based design relations for design and evaluation purposes.

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Why is it important?

We define performance-based relations for design and evaluation of masonry components strengthened with reinforced concrete and mortar layers. The failure modes in the strengthened walls and their differences with unreinforced masonry walls are critically discussed and presented. The proposed method considers the effect of failure mode on the capacity and ductility of the strengthened components. Simplified bilinear capacity curves are also proposed for strengthened walls for each failure.