COSTA, ANÍBAL1, ARÊDE, ANTÓNIO2, COSTA, ALEXANDRE A.3, FERREIRA, TIAGO M.4, GOMES, ANA5, VARUM, HUMBERTO6

1 Full Professor, University of Aveiro, Department of Civil Engineering, agc@ua.pt

2 Associate Professor, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Department of Civil Engineering, aarede@fe.up.pt

3 Professor, School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto, Department of Civil Engineering, alc@isep.ipp.pt

4 PhD Student, University of Aveiro, Department of Civil Engineering, tmferreira@ua.pt

5 Researcher, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Department of Civil Engineering, anazgomes@fe.up.pt

6 Associate Professor, University of Aveiro, Department of Civil Engineering, hvarum@ua.pt

The present paper describes an experimental program, conducted in laboratory environment, aiming at characterizing the out-of-plane behaviour of traditional unreinforced sacco stone masonry walls. In the scope of this campaign, six full-scale sacco stone masonry specimens were tested resorting to two different loading techniques under three distinct vertical pre-compression states: three specimens were subjected to an out-of-plane surface load resorting a system of airbags and the remaining were subjected to an out-of-plane horizontal point-load at the top of the wall. Based on the results obtained in the tests, the capacity of the six specimens in terms of its maximum strength, maximum displacement and energy dissipation capacity is herein discussed. To final with, an overall and brief discussion is included concerning the different test setups followed, in order to highlight their main advantages and shortcomings.

Keywords: Stone masonry, out-of-plane behaviour, seismic behaviour, airbag test, line-load test