Experimental testing of tall reinforced masonry walls under out-of-plane actions

This paper presents the results of experimental tests on tall reinforced masonry walls. Systems made with vertically perforated clay units for building mainly tall, load-bearing, reinforced masonry walls for commercial and industrial purposes were studied for applications in areas characterised by low to high seismic risk. Tests aimed at obtaining basic mechanical characterisation of the construction systems, and reproducing the behaviour of single-storey reinforced masonry buildings provided with deformable roofs. For this structural configuration, a special set-up for out-of-plane cyclic tests was designed and built. In particular, this paper presents: (a) systems used for tall reinforced masonry wall construction; (b) test set-up to reproduce the behaviour under out-of-plane loads and P–Δ effects; (c) experimental results obtained. The final aim is validating the effectiveness of the proposed construction systems and achieving complete mechanical characterisation for modelling and structural assessment purposes.