New Design Detail to Enhance the Seismic Performance of Ordinary Reinforced Partially Grouted Masonry Structures

Recent studies have shown that in the event of a strong earthquake, partially grouted (PG) masonry walls would most likely not perform according to code expectations. The research reported herein is focused on introducing an economically competitive design detail to enhance the seismic performance and safety index of PG reinforced masonry shear walls. Besides the conventional design details of single grouted vertical cells with single bond beams, two other details called double grouted vertical cells with double bond beams, and double grouted vertical cells with single bond beams plus joint reinforcement, were constructed and tested in this study. Test results demonstrated that the single grouted wall failed in a low ductility shear-dominated mode, while the modified design details resulted in a change to the high ductility shear failure mode. Results of nonlinear static and incremental dynamic analyses showed that using the proposed enhanced detail can significantly improve the seismic performance of ordinary PG masonry compared with the conventional design detail.