Non-structural masonry walls strengthened with GFRP laminates

Abstract

One of the major construction systems in Colombia, and in general throughout Latin America, consists of multistory moment sesisting reinforced concrete (RC) frames filled with unreinforced masonry (URM) walls. These non-structural masonry walls are conventionally built using clay tiles. Due to the being explored in Colombia, to prevent the failure or lessen the damages in clay tile URM walls is to strengthen them with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) laminates. This paper presents promising results of experimental tests conducted on twenty-six wallattes of 9x70x70 cm and 9x120x120 cm, which were strengthened with different layouts of GFRP laminates. In addition, a full.scale wall was tested to validate the technology. The paper discusses the effect of GFRP laminates on the failure mechanisms, capacity and ductility parameters as wells as on the overall reduction of earthquake damage for clay tile URM walls