Inplane response of wide spaced reinforced masonry shear walls

"Wide spaced reinforced masonry (WSRM) walls that contain vertical reinforced cores at horizontal spacing up to 2000mm are commonly used in high wind zones of Australia although their inplane shear resistance is not well understood. This thesis aims at providing better insight into the behaviour of WSRM walls subjected to inplane lateral loading through experimental and numerical investigations. The interactions between the unreinforced masonry (URM) panels and vertical reinforced cores are first determined using an elastic finite element analysis and the potential failure paths hypothesized. The hypotheses are then validated using a series of full-scale WSRM and Non-WSRM wall tests under monotonic and cyclic lateral loading by keeping the spacing between the vertical reinforced cores as the main design variable. Load-displacement response of these shear walls indicates that the current classification of the WSRM (in AS3700 (2001)) as those walls containing vertical reinforced grouted cores at 2000mm maximum spacing is appropriate. A finite element model (FEM) based on an explicit solution algorithm is developed for predicting the response of the masonry shear walls tested under static loading. The FEM has adopted macroscopic masonry failure criteria and flow rules, damaged plasticity model for grout and tension-only model for reinforcing bars reported in the literature, and predicted crack opening and post-peak load behaviour of the shear walls. By minimising the kinetic energy using appropriate time scaling, the FEM has provided reasonable and efficient prediction of load flow, crack patterns and load–displacement curves of the shear walls. The FEM is further validated using full-scale tests on WSRM walls of aspect ratios and precompression different to that tested before. The validated FEM is used to examine the appropriateness of the prescriptive design details for WSRM concrete masonry shear walls provided in AS3700 (2001) allowing for a large scatter in material properties. It is shown that the inplane shear capacity formula provided in AS3700 (2001) for squat WSRM shear walls is non-conservative." -- abstract.