Out-of-plane bending of masonry wall embedding with welded wire mesh (WWM) in different orientations

Abstract

The behaviour of brick masonry walls strengthened with four different patterns using welded wire mesh (WWM) overlay with mortar was investigated. The proposed WWM schemes are: (1) embedding WWM along the bed joint, (2) embedding WWM along the bed joint and a strip of WWM diagonally crossing on wall surface, (3) WWM alternately embedding along the bed joint and continuing to the surface of wall and (4) WWM fully covering on wall surface. Unstrengthened and WWMstrengthened specimens were subject to static out-of-plane flexural test with loading orientation perpendicular and parallel to the bed joint. The failure of the WWM-strengthened specimens with loading perpendicular to the bed joint was mainly due to rupture of the WWM while the failure of the WWM-strengthened specimens with loading parallel to the bed joint was mostly a sudden brittle failure. The flexural capacities of the walls specimens under perpendicular loading are higher in comparison with those of parallel loading. However, the flexural capacity is similar for both loading cases when the specimens are fully covered with WWM. The experimental results show that the adopted WWM-strengthening solutions produce a beneficial increase in flexural resistance, ductility and energy dissipation capacity making them suitable for strengthening of URM.