Enhancing the flexural behaviour of masonry wallet using PP band and steel wire mesh

The collapse of the masonry wall occurs mainly due to inadequacy of load transferring mechanism of out-of-plane behaving wall during earthquake, and is the cause for huge loss of property and life of inhabitants. Hence, an experimental program was carried out to investigate the efficiency of masonry wall in flexural loading. Total 32 specimens were tested. Some specimens were unreinforced and others were reinforced. In India, both clay brick and fly-ash brick are commonly used to construct the masonry wallets. Hence, these walls, were tested under four-point loading method as per ASTM E518-10 recommendations to investigate the influence of different brick composition in out-of-plane behaviour of wall. In addition, comparative study was also made between traditional full-size and half-scale bricks to check its suitability for the construction of scale-down models. Cost effective materials such as polypropylene (PP) band and steel wire mesh (WM) were used to strengthen these walls. The result shows that both the strengthening techniques are effective in delaying the collapse of the structure, also enhancing the flexural strength and ductility, and this paper presents these outcomes. This paper also presents the cracking load, load-displacement behaviour, stiffness and energy dissipation capacity. Finally, an analytical formulation has also been developed to validate the cracking load of the wall with experimental results.