Md Akhtar Hossain¹, Yuri Z. Totoev², and Mark J. Masia³
1)  PhD Student, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle,
Newcastle, Australia, Email: Md.Akhtar.Hossain@uon.edu.au
2)  Senior Lecturer, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle,
Australia, Email: Yuri.Totoev@newcastle.edu.au,
3)  Associate Professor, Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability, The University of Newcastle,
Australia, Email: Mark.Masia@newcastle.edu.au

Keywords: Semi-interlocking masonry, Sliding joints, DIC, Vertical displacement, In-plane cyclic testing.

Abstract. An innovative masonry building system is being developed in the Centre for Infrastructure Performance and Reliability at The University of Newcastle, Australia. It consists of mortar-less engineered masonry panels made of semi-interlocking masonry (SIM) units (bricks) which have significant energy dissipation capacity due to friction on sliding bed joints between bricks of the panel during an earthquake. This special method of interlocking SIM bricks allows relative sliding of brick courses in-plane of a wall and prevents out-ofplane relative movement of bricks. This study examines the behavior of SIM panels subject to cyclic in-plane lateral displacement. The horizontal and vertical movement of SIM units were recorded using Digital Image Correlation (DIC) every 10 seconds over approximately 8 hours of testing. The crack patterns in the SIM panels are mapped by plotting the von mises strains output from DIC results. The vertical displacement of the panel for each displacement level was also analysed in this study.