Load Bearing Capacity of Unreinforced Brick Masonry Vault
Abstract
Load Bearing Capacity of Unreinforced Brick Masonry Vault is the construction system in most of the historic structures and a considerable percentage of existing residential buildings in Egypt. One of the important disadvantages of unreinforced masonry construction is its low resistance to tensile stresses and lateral loads, so there is a need for appropriate strengthening.
Fiber reinforced polymer (FRP) composites have been successfully applied as externally bonded reinforcement for strengthening of reinforced concrete and masonry structural elements. Their excellent strength-to-weight ratio and ease of installation make it an attractive alternative for traditional strengthening methods. This paper presents experimental investigation of strengthening masonry wallets and vaults using FRP composites, as well as other traditional methods such as steel reinforcement bars, ferrocement layers and polymer mortar layers.
Conclusion
After performing calculations with different analytical approaches it has been observed that there is not a unique method which works accurately for all the cases considered. Thus, the method to be applied must be carefully selected depending on the application range of each of the proposed alternatives. Regarding the unreinforced walls (URMW) and focusing on the codes considered, it has to be mentioned that ACI-530 achieves more accurate results than Eurocode-6 in the prediction of the experimental ones. In addition, it has been observed that the codes tend to underestimate the load-bearing capacity of the tested walls.
