Polymer textiles as a retrofit material for masonry walls

Abstract

The in-plane shear behaviour of unreinforced masonry wallettes retrofitted using polymer textile reinforced mortar was investigated. In particular, the effectiveness of the retrofit technique to restrain the diagonal cracking failure mode was studied. A total of 12 two-leaf thick clay brick masonry wallettes, each being 1·2 m square in size, were structurally tested in induced diagonal shear. Of these, two wallettes were tested as-built and ten were tested after being retrofitted using different commercially available textile reinforced mortar systems. Several parameters pertaining to the in-plane shear behaviour of retrofitted masonry walls were investigated, including failure modes, stress–strain behaviour, shear strength, maximum drift, pseudo-ductility and shear modulus. It was inferred from the results that the observed diagonal shear strength increase for test wallettes having textile reinforced mortar on one face ranged between 114% and 148%, whereas the test wallettes having textile reinforced mortar on both faces failed in a brittle manner, exhibiting a shear strength of between 446 and 481% of their as-built strength.iffness and energy dissipation capacity of the frame increased significantly.