Abdulelah Al-Ahdal, Nader Aly and Khaled Galal
Abdulelah Al-Ahdal, Ph.D. student, Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, 1515 St. Catherine West, Montreal, QC, Canada, abdulelah.al-ahdal@concordia.ca
Nader Aly, Owner’s Engineering Lead, Bruce Power, ON, Canada. Formerly, Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, 1515 St. Catherine West, Montreal, QC, Canada, Nader.essam.aly@gmail.com
Khaled Galal, Professor, Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, 1515 St. Catherine
West, Montreal, QC, Canada, khaled.galal@concordia.ca
ABSTRACT
Although many studies have been conducted on reinforced masonry shear walls since the mid of the last century, those concerned with partially grouted (PG) reinforced masonry shear walls are
limited. Moreover, load-displacement analytical models for PG walls are scarce. Therefore, developing simplified analytical models that can predict the behaviour of these walls is essential. In the current study, an analytical load-displacement backbone model is proposed for sheardominated PG masonry shear walls. Due to the limited experimental data and the absence of enough data points for the analytical model, a matrix of numerical models was established to cover a wide range of parameters. The nonlinear finite element model was validated against several experimental specimens from the literature. The parameters covered by the numerical model included aspect ratio, spacing between vertical and horizontal grouted cells, axial load, ratio of vertical and horizontal reinforcement, and compressive strength of grouted and ungrouted masonry units. The analytical model is defined by five points: cracking, yielding, ultimate, 20% strength
degradation, and 40% strength degradation. The fifth point was essential as it was reported in previous experimental results that there is a significant degradation in the strength immediately after ultimate load. The analytical model was calibrated against a total of 65 shear-dominated PG walls, 3 specimens from the existing experimental database and 62 specimens generated from the
numerical model. The results show that the proposed analytical model provides a good prediction of the lateral load-displacement backbone of shear-dominated PG masonry walls.
KEYWORDS: masonry, partially grouted, backbone, shear-dominated, numerical analysis, analytical model
