Experimental study of monotonically loaded wide spaced reinforced masonry shear walls

Although wide spaced reinforced masonry (WSRM) walls perform well in places where the cyclonic wind pressure dominates the design, their behaviour under inplane loading is not fully understood. To understand the behaviour of the WSRM walls in the elastic, and pre and post peak loading stages, six full-scale single leaf, clay block WSRM shear walls were constructed and tested under monotonic loading. Spacing ratio (spacing at central region to the end region) of the vertical reinforcement within each wall was considered as the primary variable. The response of the WSRM walls to inplane loading is also compared with unreinforced masonry (URM) and end-core reinforced masonry (ECRM) walls. Ultimate shear capacity, ductility and stiffness degradation evaluated from the monotonically loaded walls are reported in this paper. It has been observed that the WSRM shear walls possess good levels of ductility and do not exhibit rapid stiffness degradation. It has been shown that the WSRM shear walls with spacing ratio around unity exhibit substantially improved post-cracked deformation characteristics.