In-plane behaviour of masonry walls embedding with steel welded wire mesh overlay with mortar

ABSTRACT This paper presents an experimental study of the structural behaviour of masonry walls strengthened with steel-welded wire mesh (WWM) overlay with mortar to improve their in-plane shear strength and deformation capacity. The experimental programme consists a compression testing of masonry prism and a diagonal compression testing of 15 wall specimens made of clay brick strengthened with four different WWM systems: (i) embedding WWM along the bed joint, (ii) embedding WWM along the bed joint and a strip diagonally crossing on wall surface, (iii) WWM alternately embedding along the bed joint and continue to the surface of wall and (iv) WWM fully cover on wall surface. The experimental results show that the adopted WWM-strengthening solutions produce a beneficial increase of compressive strength, shear resistance, ductility and energy dissipation capacity making them suitable for seismic strengthening.