Cylic behavior of truss type reinforced concrete masonry walls

Masonry is one of the most antique structural systems in the world. However, it has been losing prestige with the advance of other structural systems such as reinforced concrete and steel. This was to certain extent the result of scarce or even absence of rules, recommendations and design methods available for masonry. On the other hand, masonry has advantages other than good performance as structural system such as durability, fire resistance and thermal and acoustic reasonable behavior As a structural solution, masonry can be used on the construction of buildings inside zones with seismic hazard if steel reinforcement is foreseen (according to EC8 unreinforced masonry is not allowed in zones with moderate to high seismic hazard). Reinforced masonry appears to perform considerably well under seismic loading. It is well known that the use of steel reinforcement in masonry walls allows considerable improvements in their behavior such as the increase of the ductility and the shear strength. The mail goal of this work is thus to obtain insight on the behaviour of reinforced concrete masonry walls under cyclic loads, which is accomplished through an experimental program based on static cyclic tests carried out on reinforced masonry panels with different masonry bond and different reinforcement arrangement. The influence of the horizontal and vertical reinforcement, level of axial loading and bond masonry on the lateral resistance, ductility, stiffness degradation, and failure mechanisms were investigated.