Experimental Investigation on the Possible Effect of Previous Damage, Workmanship and Test Setup on the Out-of-plane Behaviour of Masonry Infill Walls

Abstract

The poor out-of-plane behaviour of masonry infill-walls (MIW) in recent earthquakes, resulted in several casualties and economic losses. The main objective of this work is to present an experimental campaign comprised of four out-of-plane tests of full-scale MIW with the main goal to assess the possible effect of the previous damage, workmanship and test setup in the MIW out-of-plane behaviour. From the results, it was observed that the existence of the prior damage reduced the out-of-plane strength and energy dissipation of about 30% and 70%, respectively. The workmanship can introduce variations in the MIW response from 10% to 30%.