Preliminary experimental assessment of strengthened masonry infills under out-of-plane actions

The characterization of masonry infills’ in-plane and out-of-plane response under seismic actions is nowadays deemed increasingly important for a reliable assessment of the seismic performance of buildings. 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 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. The effectiveness of the strengthening techniques is evaluated. In addition, mechanical-based approaches for the evaluation of the out-of-plane strength of both unreinforced and reinforced infills are applied. The effectiveness of these approaches is validated based on the experimental tests’ results.