Saleem Muhammad Umair

Applied Element Method Simulation of Fiber Reinforced Polymer and Polypropylene Composite Retrofitted Masonry Walls

In current research work, an attempt is made to simulate the behavior of a newly proposed composite material using 3-D Applied Element Method (AEM). Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) being a strong material provides a significant increase in shear strength. Polypropylene band (PP-band) not only holds the masonry wall system into a single unit but also provides a fairly high deformation capacity at a very low cost of retrofitting. A composite of FRP and PP-band is proposed and applied on the surface of masonry wall. Verification of the proposed numerical model is achieved by conducting experiments on twelve masonry wallets. Out of twelve, six masonry wallets were tested in out of plane bending test and six were tested under in-plane forces in the form of diagonal compression test. Same wallet retrofitting scheme was selected for in-plane and out of plane experiments and all of them were analyzed using proposed 3-D AEM numerical simulation tool. Proposed numerical model has served satisfactory and has shown a fairly good agreement with experimental results which encourages the use of 3D-AEM to numerically simulate the behavior of non-retrofitted and retrofitted masonry wallets.