Experimental research on the behavior of masonry walls reinforced with dry-connected steel plate frames under axial compression

Abstract

This paper conducted several experimental tests and theoretical analyses to present a comprehensive study on the behavior of dry-connected steel plate frame-reinforced brick walls under axial compression. One unreinforced brick wall, two brick walls reinforced with dry-connected steel plate frame, and one brick wall reinforced with steel strips were fabricated for axial compression tests. The experiments generally showed that steel plate frames effectively improved the structure’s bearing capacity and axial stiffness and impeded its cracking. Increasing the thickness of steel plates further improved the bearing capacity but undermined the ductility of the composite wall. Besides, based on the buckling theory of steel plate and the existing calculation theory of masonry strength, this paper also proposed formulas for determining the bearing capacity of the composite wall. The calculations of formulas exhibited acceptable accuracy in comparison with the experimental results.

Duan, Kangkang

PhD Student of Civil Engineering

Kangkang is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia. Previously, he received his BSc degree in Highway and Bridge Engineering from Southeast University (Mao Yisheng Class) in 2019. Then, he received his MASc degree in Civil Engineering from Southeast University in 2022. His research interests include robotics, artificial intelligence, AR/VR, and physical machine learning.