Shear strengthening of URM walls with FRP systems

This paper presents an experimental program dealing with the shear strengthening with FRP systems of URM walls built with concrete and clay units. Ten concrete and five clay masonry panels, strengthened with FRP composites in the form of laminates and rods, and stainless steel, were loaded along the wall diagonal to observe their shear performance. The dimension of the concrete masonry panels was 1.625 x 1.625 m. having a thickness of 152 mm, the masonry units were 203x152x406 mm. The clay panels were 1.22x1.22x0.1 m and the masonry units were 102x203x64 mm. For the rods the Structural Repointing technique was used. This technique consists in placing FRP rods in the masonry bed joints. On the contrary, for laminates, the Manual Lay-Up technique was used. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of FRP for increasing the shear performance of URM walls in terms of both capacity and pseudo-ductility