1 Master of Science Student, Department of Civil and Geological Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada, a.udey@usask.ca
2 Professor, Department of Civil and Geological Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, S7N 5A9, Canada, bruce.sparling@usask.ca
ABSTRACT
Twenty full-scale masonry walls were constructed and tested to failure in the Structures Laboratory at the University of Saskatchewan. One half of the specimens were loaded laterally with monotonically increasing quasi-static loads that reproduced the effects of a uniform wind pressure, while the remainder were loaded with dynamic time histories that varied randomly in a manner similar to gusty winds. Additionally, one half of the specimens within both loading regimes were constructed with true pinned connections at their top and bottom ends, while the other half of the wall specimens featured support conditions similar to nominally “pinned” supports typically encountered in practice. The research was done to determine the influence of load and connection type on the behavior of the masonry walls. It was found that walls constructed with more realistic support conditions exhibited both substantially higher bending moment resistance and greater ductility. Walls with realistic supports that were subjected to dynamic loading resembling natural wind sustained slightly higher peak moments and exhibited larger lateral displacements at failure than companion statically loaded specimens. In all cases, though, failure seemed to be initiated when a geometrically unstable displaced shape was attained. In the dynamic load tests, failure generally occurred during a sustained, large amplitude “gust”, rather than necessarily at the highest instantaneous peak load within the loading history.
KEYWORDS: masonry walls, wind loading, support conditions, unreinforced, lateral loading
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