Innovative experimental setup for N-V coupled tests on masonry panels: concept and predictive numerical simulations

A masonry pier subjected to shear can fail according to a rocking, sliding or diagonal cracking failure mode, depending on the element geometry, the acting tangential and normal stresses, the boundary conditions, and the masonry mechanical parameters [Magenes and Calvi, 1997; Calderini et al., 2009; Ferretti et al., 2019a]. With the objective of studying the shear behavior of masonry, several experimental setups were proposed, in past researches, for the execution of in-plane shear tests on masonry panels [van Vliet, 2004]. The variability of these setups, mainly related to the boundary conditions, the presence of a vertical load, and the way of application of the horizontal load to the samples, highlights the need to correctly design such systems to reproduce the desired shear failure [Ferretti et al., 2019b].