Experimental assessment of vertical spanning strengthened masonry infills under out-of-plane actions

Recent studies, as well as past earthquake experience, demonstrated that slender unreinforced masonry infills are significantly vulnerable with respect to out-of-plane actions. The out-of-plane collapse of infills significantly increases the repairment and refurbishment costs after earthquakes of reinforced concrete buildings and, above all, is highly detrimental for human life safety. For this reason, the interest on the experimental and numerical studies dedicated to the assessment of the effectiveness of out-of-pane repairing, strengthening and reinforcement techniques of masonry infills is growing, especially in recent years. In this work, experimental tests performed at the Department of Structures for Engineering and Architecture of University of Naples Federico II to characterize the out-of-plane response of one-way spanning unreinforced and reinforced masonry infills are presented. Namely, an out-of-plane test is performed on an “as-built” specimen, whose performance is compared with the experimental response of specimens strengthened by applying two different techniques, a fiber reinforced polymer and a fabric reinforced cementitious mortar. In addition, after test, the as-built specimen is repaired by applying the fiber reinforced polymer and tested again. The response of the repaired specimen is presented and discussed.