Developing Innovative Systems for Reinforced Masonry Walls by F MOSELE 1 , F da PORTO 1 , C MODENA 1 , A DI FUSCO 2 , G DI CESARE 2 , G VASCONCELOS 3 , V HAACH 3 , P B LOURENCO 3 , I BEER 4 , U SCHMIDT 4 , W BRAMESHUBER 4 , W SCHEUFLER 5 , D C SCHERMER 5 and K ZILCH 5 1 Dept. of Structural and Transportation Eng., University of Padova, Italy 2 National Association of Brick and Tiles Producer, Rome, Italy 3 Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of Minho, Guimarães, Portugal 4 Institute of Building Materials Research, RWTH Aachen University, Germany 5 Institute of Concrete and Masonry Structures, Technical University Munich, Germany ABSTRACT The Commission of the European Communities has recently funded a CRAFT research project aimed at developing innovative systems for load and non-load-bearing reinforced masonry walls. The project involves twelve partners coming from four different European countries, among which there are universities and research centres, small and medium enterprises for the production of clay and concrete units and mortars, a company for advanced metal products and industrial associations of brick and block producers. The development of the reinforced masonry walls is based on the advancement of vertical reinforcement and fastenings, of mortar and concrete and on their integration with special clay and concrete blocks for the definition of new construction systems. The foreseen advantages are: new possibilities for masonry; more economical construction; quality increase for masonry walls; crack-free and earthquake resistant construction. The project follows three steps: assessment of the technical and economical feasibility of the envisaged construction technologies by means of extensive experimental and numerical activities; construction of prototypes as demonstration of the proposed technologies and materials; in situ testing to completely validate the systems. In the present contribution, an overview of the main objectives and steps of the project is given. Furthermore, the different construction systems that are being developed and designed are described. The main fields of application and the main technical problems encountered for the different construction systems is described, together with the experimental program outlined in order to characterize their mechanical behaviour under different serviceability and ultimate conditions. 1. INTRODUCTION DISWall is the acronym of a Co-operative Research Project with a budget near to 1,340 millions of Euro, co-funded for about 1 million of Euro by the European Commission [1]. The project, that will last 24 months, aims at developing innovative systems for reinforced masonry walls. The DISWall project clusters 12 Partners, representatives of the Universities, SMEs and Industrial Associations from 4 Countries of EU. The head of the project is the Department of Structural and Transportation Engineering of the University of Padova. Among others partners involved in the project there are the Universities of Aachen and Munich from Germany and the University of Minho from Portugal. The involved Small Medium Enterprises are two Italian clay blocks manufacturers, CIS Edil Srl and ALAN Metauro Srl, a German clay blocks manufacturer, UNIPOR GmbH; a Portuguese concrete blocks producer, Costa & Almeida Lda; the Italian mortar manufacturer Tassullo SpA and, finally, the Belgian company BEKAERT N.V. that produces steel wire, used as vertical and horizontal reinforcement in masonry construction. ZIEGEL and ANDIL Assolaterizi, representing respectively the German and Italian clay bricks industry, are the Producers’ Associations of that joined the project. The main scientific and technological objectives of the DISWall project are: i) to carry out theoretical studies of the properties and the requirements for masonry units, reinforcement, mortar and concrete for construction of reinforced masonry systems; ii) to develop innovative technologies and building processes for the construction of load-bearing and non-load bearing reinforced masonry walls; iii) to design, manufacture and test the developed prototype products; iv) to validate experimentally the envisaged technological solutions by purpose-designed testing procedures and to carry out numerical parametrical assessments to define critical mechanical parameters and to assist the optimization of design; v) to carry out theoretical studies of Non-Destructive Evaluation methods to assess the masonry structures and to calibrate the relevant parameters on laboratory specimens and subsequent on-site applications; vi) to develop design rules for the proposed innovative construction systems and for their implementation into software tools and guidelines; and, finally, vii) to transfer the research results into Regulatory and Standardisation Technical Bodies in order to include them into the Structural Codes. The achievement of these objectives will come by research, technology and development activities arranged into five basic work packages: WP3 - Product development, WP4 - Construction technology, WP5 - Experimental and numerical characterization, WP6 - Design of masonry walls, WP7 - Construction and testing of prototypes, and two parallel work packages, one devoted to management issues (WP1 - Project Management) and the other designed to carry out training and dissemination (WP2 - Dissemination and Exploitation). The seven work packages are all complementary and linked each other by a specific work programme, as can be seen in Figure 1. The description of and an update of the project results can also be found on the project web-site: http://diswall.dic.unipd.it .