Seismic performance of traditional adobe masonry walls subjected to in-plane cyclic loading

Traditional adobe masonry wall is made of natural soil, sand, fiber materials without artificial hydraulic binders such as cement, lime and etc. It has been wildly used in residential buildings all over the world for thousands of years. This paper mainly aims at obtaining an insight on the seismic performance of traditional adobe walls subjected to in-plane cyclic loading. Consequently, five 1/2-scale specimens were tested under various levels of vertical stress and height/length ratios. The test results showed that three failure modes including flexural cracking/diagonal shear, rocking/toe crushing/bed joint sliding and rocking/bed joint sliding were observed to be showing horizontal and stair-stepped cracks on the interfaces between block and mortar. The failure mechanism, crack patterns and force–displacement responses were summarized and found to be similar to those of URM walls. However, significant residual displacements under each cyclic loading improved the drift limit and energy-dissipation capacity greatly. The mean value of ultimate linear and peak drift were 0.37 and 1.07 % which were about 3 and 4.5 times greater than those of URM wall. Moreover, the displacement ductility was improved. The values of equivalent viscous damping ratio varied from 0.1 to 0.3 with drift. The damping ratio values were significantly higher than those of URM, and almost equal to those of reinforced masonry walls failing in flexure. Based on test results above, it can be concluded that although lateral force resistance was weaker the deformation resistance and energy-dissipation capacity were higher than those of URM wall.

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