Seismic Performance of RAC Brick Masonry Walls With Vertical Constructional Reinforcements

The recycled aggregates concrete(RAC) brick masonry structure with vertical constructional reinforcement was proposed and has been patented by the State Intellectual Property Office of China.In order to study the seismic performance of the structure,the experimental study of eight RAC brick wall models with different height to width aspect ratio,different wall thickness and with or without vertical constructional reinforcements,had been carried out.The test models were divided into 4 groups: the first group included two wall models with the same wall thickness 260 mm and the same height to width aspect ratio 0.6,constructed with or without vertical constructional reinforcements;the second group included two wall models with the same wall thickness 260 mm and the same height to width aspect ratio 1.0,constructed with or without vertical constructional reinforcements;the third group included two wall models with the same wall thickness 390 mm and the same height to width aspect ratio 0.6,constructed with or without vertical constructional reinforcements;the fourth group included two wall models with the same wall thickness 390 mm and the same height to width aspect ratio 1.0,constructed with or without vertical constructional reinforcements.The models were tested under cyclic loading with the axial force ratio 0.2.The load-bearing capacity,stiffness and stiffness degradation,ductility and energy dissipation capacity,and failure characteristics of the models were comparatively analyzed according to the tests.The load-bearing capacity formula of the RAC brick walls were proposed in this paper and the load-bearing capacity of the RAC brick walls calculated by the formula were in good agreement with the experiment results.The results show that compare to the RAC brick masonry walls without vertical constructional reinforcements,the walls with vertical constructional reinforcements show better seismic performance,in that the load-bearing capacity,the ductility and the seismic energy dissipation capacity were improved greatly.