Experimental and numerical analysis of stone masonry walls strengthened with advanced composite materials

Abstract

Walls are fundamental structural elements in stone masonry buildings. They can be understood mainly as compressive elements providing the appropriate support to roofs, vaults, domes and arches, but also, when correctly constructed and connected, as structural elements able to face in-plane and out-of-plane loads from horizontal actions. In spite of being very common structural elements in historical buildings, the calculation of the global strength of multi-leaf masonry walls continues being a complicated task. The traditional methods, based on geometric relationships, have demonstrated to be safe in most of the
situations using high factors of security. However, as engineers, we realise the importance of improving the knowledge about these structures.
Although the current available standards about the masonry calculation, they are almost always focused on the periodically ordered masonry of brick or concrete block. The tables and equations of those codes are not generally applicable on the natural stone masonry or they should be compared and corrected according to experimental results of real structures or rehearsals in laboratory over enough size specimens. All the above-mentioned justify new
efforts to try to know better this material.
The main objectives of this thesis are:
• Improve the knowledge about multi-leaf stone masonry walls under compressive loads, taking into account the effects of slenderness, eccentricity and disconnection between leaves.
• Evaluate two strengthening techniques based on advanced composite materials, transversal sewing with FRP bars and surface treatment with TRM, to improve the structural behaviour of natural stone masonry walls.
The validation of these strengthening systems is carried out by a laboratory test campaign. Different stone and mortar specimens, masonry prisms and medium scale walls were built, strengthened and tested, in order to characterise the masonry properties. At the same time, the strengthening materials were selected and validated. Finally a FE model, including horizontal restrictions, is presented to analyse the effects of bondstones and sewing bars in multileaf masonry. This approach could be enhanced with additional experimental test to be included in future work.

Date of Award	2009
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidad del País Vasco (UPV/EHU)