1 Graduate student, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada, ahamedza@ucalgary.ca
2 Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, T2N 1N4, Canada, ngshrive@ ucalgary.ca
ABSTRACT
Partially grouted and reinforced hollow concrete masonry is used widely. The maximum spacing allowed between reinforcing bars varies in codes of practice, being for example, 2.0 m in Australia and 2.4 m in Canada. The aspect ratio (height/length) of shear walls has been a component of several studies on the shear capacity of reinforced concrete masonry, with consensus that walls with lower aspect ratios show higher in-plane shear capacity. However, there have been few studies investigating the behaviour of wide-spaced partially reinforced (WSPR) masonry walls. The results of tests on three WSPR concrete masonry walls with an overall aspect ratio of 0.32 but varying spacing of the reinforcement revealed that the shear equations from both Canadian and Australian codes significantly overestimated the shear capacity of the walls. Therefore, to investigate the behaviour of WSPR walls subject to shear further, 8 walls were constructed from half-scale concrete masonry blocks, consisting of 2 square panels of the same size and 6 squat walls of the same height but with an aspect ratio of 0.5. The walls were tested monotonically in in-plane shear. Results showed that two-panel specimens could crack as two independent panels or as a wall as a whole. What causes the difference in behaviour of supposedly similar specimens subject to the same test conditions remains to be elucidated.
KEYWORDS: in-plane shear, partially grouted masonry, wide-spaced reinforcement, aspect ratio
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