www.tjprc.org editor@tjprc.org EXPERIMENTAL BEHAVIOR OF CLAY MASONRY WALL WITH OPENING UNDER EFFECT OF LATERAL FORCES MOHAMMED M. RASHEED 1 & KARAM MOHAMMED JARJEES 2 1 Assistant Professor, Civil Engineering Department, AlMustansiriyah Engineering College Almustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq 2 M.Sc. Student, Civil Engineering Department, AlMustansiriyah Engineering College Almustansiriyah University, Baghdad, Iraq ABSTRACT This paper presents an experimental test program, on eight clay brick masonry walls, under the effect of lateral forces. The effect of opening, boundary condition and vertical compression forces were assumed as, variables in the tests. Three of these eight tested walls were constructed which had a mid-span opening. The tested walls were designed with different supported along two, three and four edges. The top and bottom edges were assumed as simply-supported, while the vertical edges were supported by short return walls, which are restrained from rotation, so that, the two vertical edges could reasonably to be considered as rotationally fixed. The walls were loaded using a system of airbags. The ultimate strength of each wall was determined and compared with previous theoretical methods. KEYWORDS: Brick Wall, Out of Plane Lateral Loading, Ultimate Strength & Virtual Work Received: Aug 10, 2017; Accepted: Aug 30, 2017; Published: Sep 07, 2017; Paper Id.: IJCSEIERDOCT20173 INTRODUCTION Considerable improvements have been made, in the design and analysis methods available to calculate the capability of brick walls, that are supported on varied sides and are subject to horizontal loads, have been achieved. The improvements, based on a virtual work, “force-based” approach still assume, failure occurs once a wall has reached its ultimate strength, and this occurs in bending at very small displacements, of the order between 2 and 5 mm, and assumes that, the moment capacity in vertical bending and diagonal bending is extended together. This restriction, whilst appropriate for wind loading, has been shown to be extremely conservative, for seismically loaded walls [1]. A common practice, to develop out of plane horizontal lateral loading, is to perform four points bending tests, implemented by Abboud et al. (1996) [2], and Galal, and Sasanian (2010) [3], on masonry panels. The load is applied in two lines, by using two steel rod's sections, but this kind of loading doesn’t assist the two-way bending of testing wells. This led the studies to the concept of air mattress loading, to create a distributed uniform horizontal lateral loading, which was used in many studies, such as Griffith et al. (2007) [4]. The capacity of brick masonry walls under out of plane loading, depend on their dimensions [5], support conditions [6] and material characteristics [7]. Additionally, the presence of opening [8] and vertical pre-compression [4], also have strong influence behavior on the maximum capacity too. Original Article International Journal of Civil, Structural, Environmental and Infrastructure Engineering Research and Development (IJCSEIERD) ISSN (P): 2249-6866; ISSN (E): 2249-7978 Vol. 7, Issue 5, Oct 2017, 23-36 © TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.