Efficacy of basalt fibre reinforced cement mortar composite for out-of-plane strengthening of unreinforced masonry

摘要

This paper presents an experimental study on unreinforced masonry (URM) wallettes strengthened using basalt fibre mesh reinforced cement mortar (BFRCM) composite. A total of 8 URM and 16 strengthened wallettes, along with their constituent materials, were tested in two orthogonal directions, under two point (line) out-of-plane loading. The variables examined in this study are loading direction and size of grid spacing of basalt fibre mesh. The performance of the strengthening technique is determined by examining failure modes, strength, effective rigidity, energy absorption capacity and ductility. A set of non-dimensional parameters is also defined for identifying the generalized behaviour of the wallettes. The strengthening technique using BFRCM enhanced the strength of the wallettes up to 4 times, deformability up to 29 times, and energy absorption capacity up to 139 times, as compared to URM wallettes. A comparison with analytical results shows that the ordinary beam theory predicts the strength with reasonable accuracy, but is not able to predict the effective rigidity. (C) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.