Impact of Openings on the In-Plane Strength of Confined and Unconfined Masonry Walls: A Sustainable Numerical Study

Abstract

While openings are an essential requirement in buildings as a source of access, fresh air and sunlight, these openings cause a reduction in the lateral stiffness and torsional resistance of masonry wall units. A detailed numerical investigation was carried out to explore the impact of the opening percentage on the in-plane stiffness and lateral strength of unconfined and confined masonry wall panels prepared using calcium silicate bricks, for sustainable masonry structures. A commercially available FEM package (ANSYS) was used to carry out comparative analysis of ten wall panels, five of each type (confined and unconfined masonry walls) with concentrically located openings of varying sizes (0% to 16.5%). A simplified micro-modeling technique following the Newton Raphson Algorithm was adopted. Results revealed that the confined masonry approach unveiled a more reliable anti-seismic response along with improved in-plane strength in the case of confined masonry walls. The failure type shifted from pure flexural to more of a blend of shear and flexure after the opening percentage increased to 10.09% in unconfined masonry walls, which was not the case where confinement was provided. Based on the outcomes, it is strongly recommended to adopt confined masonry in highly seismic-prone areas to avoid catastrophic damage caused by earthquakes.

Influence of Confining Element Stiffness on the In-Plane Seismic Performance of Confined Masonry Walls

“…Also, the impact of the steel reinforcement ratio and the size of the confining elements on the seismic characteristics were studied numerically under pseudo-static reverse cyclic loading. For this purpose, the commercially available finite element software ANSYS 15.0 was used based on the past research on masonry walls [71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78].…”

Influence of Masonry Infill Wall Position and Openings in the Seismic Response of Reinforced Concrete Frames

“…Given that the latter modelling strategy comes with a high computational cost [42], the former strategy was found more common in use in the literature. As such, several proposals are found in the literature to quantify the reduction factor to count for the infill walls (e.g., see among others [42,[47][48][49]). These models account for different parameters of the opening such as size, aspect ratio, type and position.…”

Evaluation of vertical irregularity effects of historical masonry buildings through a simplified procedure: the case of Florence city center

“…Irregularity issues in masonry buildings are part of a wide and complex field which covers the mechanical and constructive aspects -such as the intrinsic heterogeneity of the material, the quality of the components, the effectiveness of the connections between the orthogonal walls, as well as the geometric-architectural aspects -such as the arrangement of the openings, the position of the stairs, the plano-altimetric proportions, etc. Some of the above-mentioned conditions can contribute to increase the seismic vulnerability of masonry buildings and, at the same time, to amplify the difficulty of researchers in investigating the seismic response of such buildings through analytical formulations or numerical procedures already available in the scientific literature (Mughal UA et al 2022, Berto et al 2017.…”