Experimental characterization and capacity assessment of GFRP retrofitted AAC block masonry

Masonry buildings reflect a suboptimal performance during strong to major earthquakes. Seismic enhancement of masonry buildings is thus instrumental because masonry is still the most dominant structural system adopted to construct residential buildings in many active seismic regions worldwide. The present study performs experimental characterization of autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) blocks, polymer modified mortar (PMM), AAC prisms, and AAC wall panels to highlight the efficacy of alternative construction material that is gaining increasing attention lately. Compressive strengths of units and prisms as well as shear strength of walls with and without glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) are reported in this paper. The experimentally characterized material properties are also deployed to a code recommended two story case study structure and eigenvalue analysis and capacity assessment through static nonlinear pushover analysis are performed. The effect of aspect ratio is assessed for both with and without GFRP scenarios. The polymer modified mortar is found to be efficient in enhancing the crushing strength of mortar to be used in AAC block masonry. The sum of observations highlights that the introduction of GFRP in a two story building results in the enhancement of the fundamental frequency by at least 16%. Similarly, considerable enhancement in seismic capacity of AAC masonry is possible with the use of GFRP. Furthermore, GFRP is found to be effective in enhancing both compressive strength and shear strength of AAC block masonry with PMM.