Effect of prior in-plane damage on the out-of-plane behavior of adobe block walls

Abstract

Adobe block walls are prone to out-of-plane collapse under seismic actions. Current research on the in-plane seismic performance of adobe block walls is relatively comprehensive, while studies on out-of-plane seismic performance and the relationship between in-plane and out-of-plane seismic performance are lacking. This paper conducted in-plane cyclic loading tests and out-of-plane airbag monotonic loading tests on adobe block walls, obtaining the out-of-plane failure modes, load-bearing capacity, deformation characteristics, under different in-plane damage conditions. Based on this, theoretical analysis was used to derive a method for calculating the load-bearing capacity of adobe block walls in the out-of-plane direction and establish an empirical relationship between in-plane damage severity and out-of-plane load-bearing capacity. The research findings indicate that adobe block walls experience bending tensile failure along the bottom horizontal mortar joint when subjected to uniformly distributed out-of-plane loads. The difference between the cracking load and peak load is relatively small. The wall displaces linearly along the height direction, with the maximum out-of-plane displacement occurring at the top of the wall. There is a clear interaction between in-plane damage severity and out-of-plane strength of the wall. As the in-plane damage severity increases, the out-of-plane load-bearing capacity of the wall decreases by 6.25% to 34.87%.