BEHAVIOR OF INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY POST-TENSIONING MASONRY BEAMS AND WALLS UNDER-OUT-OF-PLANE LOADING AHMED A.

MAHMOUD Associate Professor, Civil Engineering Department Faculty of Engineering at Shoubra, University of Zagazig Cairo, Egypt 1. ABSTRACT Many older masonry structures were detailed to withstand gravity loads only. These structures typically have little or no steel reinforcement and thus are highly susceptible to damage caused by out-of-plane loading during a seismic event and due to wind loads. Such structures tend to show a low strength for lateral loads and, perhaps even worse, a brittle behavior once the cracking resistance is exceeded. In recent years, various techniques have been proposed to strengthen these structures. Internal and external post tensioning technique using steel or FRP tendons is one of these techniques. The basic concept of the proposed method is to improve the strength and ductility of the structure by introducing prestressing to take all the tension forces associated with the expected lateral loads and/or displacements, and to exceed the cracking resistance of these structures. This paper presents an analytical investigation carried out to study the elastic, inelastic behavior and flexural strength of beams and masonry walls strengthened by either internally or externally bonded or unbonded post tensioning tendons under out-of-plane monotonic loading. Four experimental tests, done by other researchers were numerically simulated as illustrative examples using both the structural analysis program ANSYS 5.4 and the developed computer program by the author to verify the reliability and validity of the used finite element method to model masonry beams and walls strengthened by external or internal post-tensioning tendons. The good agreement established enables to perform a parametric study for the key factors affecting the behavior and strength of these structural elements and to get a group of important conclusions.
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KEYWORDS : Post Tensioning - Masonry Beams and Walls Out of Plane Monotonic Loading - Material Nonlinearity Finite Element Method Load Deflection Curves External Post Tensioning Internal Post Tensioning Unbonded Tendons -Strengthening Ultimate Strength- Fabric Tendons Numerical Analysis Analytical Simulation ANSYS Program.