ABSTRACT
The Semi Interlocking Masonry (SIM) infill panels have been developed in Masonry Research Group at the University of Newcastle, Australia. The improving seismic performance is the main purpose of the SIM panels that is achieved by dissipating earthquake energy through in-plane sliding of brick courses on bed joints. The out-of-plane relative sliding of bricks in SIM panels is prevented by topological or mechanical interlocking. The SIM panels have reduced in-plane stiffness and increased displacement ductility and energy dissipation capacity compared to the traditional masonry panels. One of the problems of traditional masonry panels during earthquake excitation is their out-of-plane failure. The out-of-plane behavior of semi-interlocking masonry panel has not been extensively researched yet. The main objective of this paper is to present an analitical method for evaluation of the out-of-plane load/displacement capacity of a SIM panel. The developed method is based on the virtual work approach. Analytical predictions were compared to the experimental results for a topological SIM panel. The results show that the proposed method has good correlation with experimental results for the topological SIM panel and could be used potentially for estimation of the out-of-plane strength.
