Experimental study on seismic behavior of masonry walls retrofitted with steel-member and high-performance polymer mortar

In this paper, an innovative retrofitting method using steel-member and high-performance polymer mortar was purposed for masonry walls. In order to study the effectiveness of the proposed retrofitting method, three specimens of concrete tie-column confined masonry wall were designed and manufactured. The quasi-static tests were conducted in two stages: before and after retrofitting. Damage progression, hysteretic behavior, stiffness degradation, and energy dissipation were compared and analyzed. The results show that after retrofitting with the proposed method, bearing capacity of damaged walls is increased by 17.66%-42.37%. The initial stiffness can be restored to 85% of the original wall. The energy dissipation capacity is increased by 270.20%-330.55%. The proposed method can effectively improve the seismic behavior of damaged masonry walls. Finally, evaluation methods of bearing capacity for masonry walls before and after retrofitting were given, the calculated results were in reasonably good agreement with test results.