Seismic strengthening of existing brick masonry with CRM coatings on one side

Abstract

A Composite-Reinforced Mortar (CRM) designed for the seismic strengthening of existing single or double-leaf brick masonry walls on one side only is presented and extensively tested through experiments. The benefit of the proposed strengthening method is that it does not require temporary relocation of residents. The existing single and double-leaf solid brick masonry used in the research is typical throughout Europe. The CRM coating consisted in a natural hydraulic lime mortar coating with a nominal thickness of 30 mm, reinforced with a Glass Fiber-Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) mesh applied to the wall using GFRP transverse connectors and steel injected transverse connectors for double-leaf brick masonry. Cyclic in-plane shear compression tests and out-of-plane cyclic tests were carried out on 250 mm thick full-scale masonry walls. The results demonstrated that the single-sided coating effectively enhanced the resistance, deformation capacity and dissipated energy under seismic loads, despite existing design models tending to underestimate the shear capacity to some extent.