In-plane behaviour of clay brick masonry wallettes retrofitted with single-sided fabric-reinforced cementitious matrix and deep mounted carbon fibre strips

The in-plane shear behaviour of a new seismic retrofit concept which combines two standalone retrofit measures for in-plane and out-of-plane strengthening of masonry walls was investigated. The in-plane reinforcement consists of a single-sided carbon fabric-reinforced cementitious matrix (FRCM) overlay, while the out-of-plane reinforcement consists of deep mounted carbon fibre reinforced polymer strips embedded in a viscous-elastic epoxy. An experimental program was undertaken in which clay brick masonry wallettes were subjected to the diagonal compression test to assess the effectiveness of the strengthening system on the in-plane behaviour. The obtained results showed that the single-sided carbon FRCM overlay increased the shear capacity with 80%, compared to the unstrengthened control specimens. Moreover, by testing two different FRCM overlay thicknesses it was found that a thicker matrix layer does not increase the shear capacity of wallettes. However, wallettes provided with a thicker FRCM overlay did show a higher level of ductility. Furthermore, the obtained experimental results showed that the presence of only the aforementioned out-of-plane reinforcement does not affect the in-plane strength of masonry wallettes loaded under shear, and even prevented the disintegration after reaching the failure load compared to the unstrengthened control specimens. Finally, an existing analytical model as well as the Eurocode 8 design provisions were compared to the found failure mechanisms and failure loads. The analytical model developed showed good correspondence with the experimental values for both the failure mechanism and failure load, with an experimental/model ratio φ of 0.98, while Eurocode 8 proved to lead to conservative values.