A study of the lateral strength of brickwork panels with openings

• Main Author: Duarte, Ronaldo Bastos
• Published: University of Edinburgh 1993
• Subjects: 690
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.649746

Brickwork panels are often required to resist out-of-plane lateral loading due to wind. In many cases these panels contain window openings. Although extensive research has been done on the lateral strength of walls without openings and the bending moments coefficients have been given in the British Standard Code of practice for the use of masonry, little is known about the behaviour of brickwork panels with window openings subjected to wind loading. The work described in this thesis, therefore is mainly confined to the lateral strength of unreinforced brickwork wall panels with window openings subjected to uniformly distributed loading simulating the wind pressure. The experimental work was carried out on half-scale single-leaf rectangular panels having window openings. The investigation relies on extensive experimental work to gather data on the behaviour of unreinforced brickwork at cracking and at failure. Tests done on 160 wallettes, 24 cross-beams and 16 walls are presented in Chapters 3, 4 and 5. The material properties were defined from the prisms and wallettes tests. The cross-beams were tested to obtain the behaviour of masonry in bi-axial bending. A moment interaction diagram at cracking in bi-axial bending has been presented which is subsequently used to predict the experimental cracking pressures of the cross-beams and panels. An apparent increase in the flexural tensile strength perpendicular to the bed-joints was found in bi-axial bending compared to the ultimate flexural tensile strength in uni-axial bending. The proposed cracking criterion, when combined with the finite element analysis or orthotropic plates, predicts cracking pressure reasonably well for the walls having window opening. The strip method and yield-line analysis, both, were used to predict the ultimate failure of the panels. Extensive theoretical yield-line solutions for the panels of various boundary conditions containing window openings subjected to wind loading have been presented in Chapter 5.