Analytical Solution of the Shear – Displacement Curve for Reinforced Masonry Panels

Starting from the 80’s several computational techniques for the solution of the masonry response problem have been proposed, but only a few are viable for practical design purposes. The static non linear push over method has been established in the Italian design rules in 1976, shortly after the great Friuli earthquake and appears to be a very sound design tool for short, well organised, regular masonry structures. In the paper the approximation of bilinear shear response of masonry walls is removed by introducing an analytical curve obtained by satisfying the axis wise equilibrium conditions while assuming for masonry a no tension elastic plastic in compression relationship. The procedure is able to deal with unreinforced as well as FRP reinforced panels with the same algorithm, arriving at closed form response formulas. The proposed solution is compared with most of the literature experimental results of shear in plane loading of masonry panels The comparison of the results show the effectiveness of the proposed method which is characterized by absolute errors less than 15 % on average.