Shearing behavior of joints in load-bearing masonry wall

Wind, earth pressure, and earthquakes acting on a building generate bending effects and produce shear stresses in load bearing masonry walls. Stress and strain responses during shearing of masonry joints indicate unrecoverable shear and normal deformation that demand use of a constitutive model specifically developed for joints. In this study, an elasto-plastic joint constitutive law is proposed to model the shearing behavior of joints in load-bearing masonry walls. The brick-mortar bed joints were sheared using a shear box test. The physical parameters of the model were obtained from the experimental data. The load-displacement response observed experimentally was analyzed using the proposed constitutive law. The model appears to predict the shearing behavior of brick-mortar bed joints reasonably well. The study presented herein provides a basis for using an analytical method for determining shearing displacement response of brick-mortar bed joints by applying an clasto-plastic constitutive law for joints and determining its parameters from the shear testing of brick-mortar bed joints.