GANDHI, RUSHABH1, MENON, ARUN2

1) MS Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Department of Civil Engineering, rushabh13833@gmail.com

2) Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Department of Civil Engineering, arunmenon@iitm.ac.in

As per the Indian housing census data (2011), nearly 85.4% of the building stock belongs to the category of non-engineered and semi-engineered masonry structures, of which 47.5% are with solid burnt brick walls, up from 44.9% of census 2001. Most of these structures lack simple seismic-resistant features, even in moderate to severe seismic zones. Undoubtedly, seismic risk reduction in the Indian scenario is a grand challenge. Given the extensive use of solid brick masonry in the country, bed-joint reinforcement, used in isolation, could be an appropriate solution to improve the seismic performance of masonry buildings in low-moderate seismic regions. Due to the lack of a national code on design and construction of reinforced masonry so far, experimental investigations on bed-joint reinforced shear walls, to quantify the effect of reinforcement on deformation capacity, gain significance. Past international literature indicates that bed-joint reinforcement provides only marginal improvement of in-plane shear capacity, but satisfactory improvement in ductility capacity. However, almost no research on solid brick masonry walls is available. The current paper addresses an experimental study on six full-scale solid burnt clay brick masonry walls, with and without bed-joint reinforcement, through displacement-controlled in-plane cyclic testing.

Keywords: Solid clay brick masonry, seismic performance, bed-joint reinforcement