Retrofitting of masonry walls by using a mortar joint technique; experiments and numerical validation

This paper presents research on a conventional but practical retrofitting method for masonry walls along with the numerical modelling of it under in-plane lateral shear compression loading. The latter is capable of predicting the experimental collapse load and overall behaviour quite accurately. The retrofitting approach is based on building a wall parallel to an existing single-leaf wall and bonding the two leaves together using a mortar (collar) joint, merging the two individual panels into a unified double-leaf wall. Experiments on this retrofitting approach for both undamaged and damaged masonry walls have been introduced in the present paper. The tests revealed that the pre-damage application can increase the strength by 50% while the post-damage one can restore the initial strength. A micro-scale numerical model has been devised by considering the bricks as rigid elements and the mortar joint as a nonlinear failure surface. The model was implemented in the commercial Finite Element (FE) software MIDAS FEA and the numerical results were verified against the available experimental data. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.