Time-Dependent Prestress Losses in Historic Clay Brick Masonry Walls Seismically Strengthened Using Unbonded Posttensioning

Abstract

Time-dependent prestress losses in historic unreinforced clay brick masonry (URM) walls strengthened using unbonded posttensioning were investigated, with a particular emphasis on masonry shortening resulting from creep and shrinkage. An experimental program was undertaken that involved continuous monitoring of masonry shortening occurring in prestressed URM wallettes over a period of 180 days. The test wallettes were extracted from a real historic URM building and were subjected to varying magnitudes of prestress, representing axial stresses that would be developed at the wall base when strengthened using unbonded posttensioning. A rheological model is proposed for predicting masonry creep shortening, which can subsequently be used to predict posttensioning losses. It was established that a prestress loss of up to 16.4% for normal threaded steel bars and up to 5.4% for sheathed greased seven wire strands can be expected in posttensioned historic URM walls when the tendons are posttensioned to a stress of 0.5 ƒpu.