INFLUENCE OF REINFORCEMENT ON THE BEHAVIOR OF HOLLOW CONCRETE BLOCK MASONRY PRISM UNDER COMPRESSION - AN EXPERIMENTAL AND ANALYTICAL APPROACH

Abstract

Reinforced masonry was developed to exploit the strength potential of masonry and to solve its lack of tensile strength. Experimental and analytical studies have been carried out to investigate the effect of reinforcement on the behavior of hollow concrete block masonry prisms under compression and to predict ultimate failure compressive strength. In the numerical program, three dimensional non-linear finite elements (FE) model based on the micro-modeling approach is developed for both unreinforced and reinforced masonry prisms using ANSYS (14.5). The proposed FE model uses multi-linear stress-strain relationships to model the non-linear behavior of hollow concrete block, mortar, and grout. Willam-Warnke's five parameter failure theory has been adopted to model the failure of masonry materials. The comparison of the numerical and experimental results indicates that the FE models can successfully capture the highly nonlinear behavior of the physical specimens and accurately predict their strength and failure mechanisms.