The effect of extended steel sheet thickness used on vertical hole block brick walls under diagonal loads on wall behavior

Reinforced concrete structures and masonry structures constitute the types of structures representing the highest construction stock in the world, especially in regions affected by destructive earthquakes. Reinforced concrete buildings have become a highly preferred type of buildings after its discovery in the 18th century. At the same time, very well built masonry buildings have survived for centuries even in high seismic hazard areas. However, although masonry structures have sufficient vertical load bearing capacity, they do not show much resistance against horizontal earthquake forces; it has become a well-known fact, both with observations made after severe earthquakes and with experiments carried out in labs. Based on this realistic situation, various researches are conducted to increase the resistance and bearing capacity of masonry structures against earthquake loads. Strengthening of masonry brick walls has been dealt with in this study, since the strengthening of the walls, which play the role of bearing elements especially in masonry structures, is the most important factor that affects the structure behavior. Masonry brick walls, in the literature have been strengthened using many different materials such as, steel profiles and sheets, epoxy resin, fibrous polymer strip and fabric etc…. In this study, the "expanded steel plate" technique, which, in the literature, is used to strengthen infill brick walls, but has not been tested on masonry brick walls, was used and the effect of the use of expanded steel plate in different thicknesses on masonry brick wall strength and behavior was investigated. The study is one of the four sub-studies conducted under the main title "strengthening masonry brick walls". This sub-study was carried out with a total of 5 test elements, one reference wall and four strengthened walls. One of the reinforced samples was designed as a testing element in the main study. All samples prepared for the experiment were tested under diagonal loading. In the strengthening process, steel plates were added to both sides of the wall without plaster and these plates were fixed on the wall with the help of bollards. In the study, the thickness of the steel plates used for strengthening was accepted as the variable parameter of the experiment. As a result of the study, it has been observed that strengthened samples reach large load carrying and energy damping capacity thanks to steel plates and anchorage bolts that can carry great tensile stresses, there is no sudden load loss in the carrying capacity of the test samples, and the samples have maintained their integrity until the end of the experiment, great increases in ductility and stiffness have been observed.