Experimental assessment of the in-plane lateral capacity of autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) masonry walls with flat-truss bed-joint reinforcement

Experimental campaigns carried out in the past showed that the presence of truss bed-joint reinforcement generally improves the performance of masonry panels subjected to horizontal actions. The truss-like elements improve resistance and reduce damage and, therefore, enhance the displacement capacity. Experimental tests available in the literature, performed on prototypes with a different scale or in small numbers compared to the possible combinations of slenderness, axial load and boundary conditions, hardly allow quantitative conclusions on the real benefit of the presence of horizontal reinforcement to the performance improvement for a specific masonry type to be drawn. The experimental campaign presented includes a set of in-plane cyclic tests on Autoclaved Aerated Concrete (AAC) masonry panels with thin horizontal and vertical joints filled with thin layer mortar, made both in unreinforced and bed-joint reinforced masonry with flat-truss bed-joint reinforcement. Direct comparison of the results, along with specific tests performed on wallettes made with the two different construction technologies, allows the assessment of the effectiveness of the horizontal reinforcement in enhancing the in-plane seismic performance of AAC masonry.