Since the establishment of ASTM standard C91, masonry cement mortars have become widely used for masonry construction in low to moderate seismic regions. However, the Masonry Standards Joint Committee Code prohibits the use of masonry cement mortars in lateral force resisting systems for structures that fall into Seismic Design Categories D, E, and F. The general objective of this study is to e...

Given that concrete masonry walls are expected to experience shrinkage combined with thermal expansion and contraction, and in some cases even carbonation, throughout their service life, cracking is to be expected. However, after concrete masonry walls have been placed into service, originally anticipated and accounted for cracking is often misdiagnosed as a structural defect. Such misdiagnoses...

The highly composite and anisotropic nature of masonry, which is a result of the variation in the properties of the masonry constituents, makes it very difficult to find an accurate material model to predict its behaviour satisfactorily. Current research by the authors has focused more closely on the behaviour of laterally loaded masonry wall panels using model updating techniques supported by ...

The present paper makes a critical review of some methods and models, now available in the technical literature and commonly used in the analysis of masonry vaults up to their collapse, by highlighting advantages and drawbacks of each approach. All methods adopted to describe the mechanical behavior of masonry structures, in order to be reliable, must take into account the distinctive aspects o...

In this paper, earthquake-resistance behaviors of existing masonry structures are evaluated based on a certain masonry building. The existing masonry structure is evaluated in its defects of primary design and construction measurements, seismic bearing capacity and durability. Based on results of evaluation, the seismic reinforcement design is introduced for improving earthquake-resistance beha...

Unreinforced masonry (URM) walls comprise vertical piers and horizontal spandrels, which together form the lateral load resisting system. Whereas past research yielded significant advances in the understanding of the force–deformation characteristics of masonry piers, knowledge of the behaviour of masonry spandrels is lacking. This paper makes a contribution to our understanding of the seismic ...

A thin layer of ductile fiber-reinforced mortar material referred to as Engineered Cementitious Composites, or ECC has been experimentally investigated as a seismic retrofit for unreinforced masonry infill walls in non-ductile reinforced concrete frames. Compression tests of masonry prisms retrofitted with 13mm of ECC were conducted representing the compression strut of a masonry infill under i...