The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Cyclic loading tests of masonry single piers, Volume 3 - height to width ratio of 0.5

Hidalgo, Pedro A.; Mayes, Ronald L.; McNiven, Hugh D.; Clough, Ray W.

UCB/EERC-79/12, Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 1979-05, 153 pages (515/H482/1979/v.3)

This report presents the results of eighteen cyclic, inplane shear tests on fixed-ended masonry piers having a height-to-width ratio of 0.5. These eighteen tests form part of a test program consisting of eighty single pier tests. Previous reports have presented the results of forty-five piers having height-to-width ratios of 2 and 1 and a subsequent report will present the test results of the remaining seventeen piers. The test setup was designed to simulate, insofar as possible, the boundary conditions the piers would experience in a perforated shear wall of a complete building. Each test specimen was a full-scale pier 40 in. high and 80 in. wide. Three types of masonry construction were used: a hollow concrete block, a hollow clay brick type that used an 8-in.-wide unit, and a double wythe grouted core clay brick, 10-in.-thick wall that consisted of two wythes 3 1/2 in. thick and a 3-in. grouted core. The variable included in the investigation was the quantity of horizontal reinforcement. All the piers were fully grouted. The results are presented in the form of hysteresis envelopes, graphs of stiffness degradation, energy dissipation and shear distortion, and tabulated data on the ultimate strength and hysteresis indicators. A discussion of these test results is presented but no definitive conclusions are offered. These will be included in a final report at the completion of the eighty tests.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/EERC/EERC-79-12.pdf (12 MB)