PREDICTION AND ITS VERIFICATION ON STIFFNESS AND BEARING CAPACITY OF MUD WALLS BASED ON THEIR LATERAL LOAD CARRYING MECHANISM

This paper shows that the lateral resistant performance and the fracture characteristic of Japanese traditional mud walls can be predicted based on their lateral load carrying mechanism, a hypothesis founded by the authors. Our previous research has verified through the loading experiments for various mud wall segments that the resistant force of mud walls should be caused by the four principal mechanical factors. Using the performance of these mechanical factors, this paper tried to propose the equations to predict initial stiffness and maximum bearing capacity of mud walls with 1P or 2P width (1P equals to 91cm) and also how to judge if any shear crack fracture will occur in these walls. The lateral loading experimental results of the mud walls agreed well with the predicted ones and thus the validity of the hypothetic mechanism and the usefulness of the performance prediction method were shown.