Experimental testing of unreinforced masonry walls with openings subject to cyclic in-plane shear

Book of Conference proceedings - Brick and Block Masonry - Trends, Innovations and ChallengesThis chapter presents the results of an experimental testing program of Unreinforced Masonry (URM) walls with openings subjected to cyclic in-plane shear loading. The primary aim of the experimental program is to obtain force-displacement relationships for URM walls with openings to be used in future nonlinear static pushover analyses of entire URM buildings. The seismic vulnerability is due to URM's high mass and stiffness, low tensile and shear strength, low ductility, and high variability of material properties. When a building is subject to earthquake loading, inertial forces are transferred from floors and out-of-plane walls to in-plane walls. The wall geometrical properties and vertical pre-compression levels for the experimental testing programme were selected so that both pier and spandrel failure modes would occur in the walls.C. Allen, M.J. Masia, A.W. Page, M.C. Griffith, H. Derakhshan, N. Mojsilovi