In-plane seismic performance of unreinforced masonry walls strengthened with unbonded prestressed wire rope units

This study proposes a practical strengthening technique for enhancing the in-plane shear strength and ductility of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls using the unbonded prestressed wire rope units. Six full-scale strengthened URM walls and an unstrengthened URM wall were tested under constant axial load and cyclic lateral loads to explore the significance and limitations of the developed seismic strengthening procedure. The main variables investigated were the aspect ratio of walls, and the spacing and configuration of the prestressed wire ropes. The ductility of the walls tested was evaluated using the work damage indicator calculated at each loading step from the hysteretic loops. In addition, shear transfer capacities of masonry and wire ropes were identified based on the statistical fitting of test data for URM walls compiled from the literature and 45° truss analogy, respectively, in order to propose simple equations for shear strength of the URM walls strengthened with the developed wire rope units. Test results showed that the proposed strengthening procedure was highly effective in enhancing the in-plane shear strength and ductility of URM walls and controlling crack propagation along head and bed mortar joints. The shear strength and work damage indicator increased with the decrease of the spacing of wire ropes, showing that the inclined wire ropes were more capable of enhancing ductility than vertical wire ropes. The crack resistance capacity and stiffness of URM walls were also improved due to the additional axial compression force provided from the prestressing force applied to the wire ropes. The shear capacities obtained from the proposed simple equations were in good agreement with the test results, indicating that the mean and standard deviation of the ratios between measured and predicted shear capacities were 1.14 and 0.13, respectively.

► We proposed a seismic strengthening technique of unreinforced masonry (URM) walls.
► Simple equations to evaluate the shear transfer capacities of URM were also proposed.
► We examined the seismic performance and failure mode of full-scale URM walls.