Navid Sasanian¹ and Khaled Galal²

1. A.Sc. Graduate Student, Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3G 1M8
2. Associate Professor, Department of Building, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Concordia University, Montréal, Québec, Canada H3G 1M8

ABSTRACT

The objective of this paper is to assess the out-of-plane flexural performance of masonry walls that are reinforced with Glass Fibre-Reinforced Polymers (GFRP) rods, as an alternative for steel rebars. Eight 1mx3m full-scale walls were constructed using hollow concrete masonry unit and tested in four-point bending with an effective span of 2.4 m between the supports. The walls were tested when subjected to increasing monotonic loads up to failure. The applied loads would represent out-of-plane loads arising from wind, soil pressure, or earthquake. One wall is unreinforced; another wall is reinforced with customary steel rebars and the other six walls are reinforced with different amounts of GFRP reinforcement. Two of the GFRP-reinforced walls were grouted only in the cells were the rods were placed in order to investigate the effect of grouting the empty cells. The force-deformation relationship of the walls and the associated strains in the reinforcement were monitored throughout the tests. The relative performances of tested walls are assessed in order to quantify the effect of different design variables. The range of GFRP reinforcement ratios covered in the experiments was used to propose a capacity diagram for design of FRP-reinforced masonry walls similar to that of reinforced concrete elements.

KEYWORDS: FRP reinforcement, reinforced masonry, walls, flexure.

A5-1