NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR OF REINFORCED MASONRY COLUMNS

Abstract

This study investigated the behaviour of reinforced concrete (RC) masonry columns with an emphasis on assessing the moment magnifier method specified in the Canadian masonry design standard CSA S304-14 for design of masonry columns. As the CSA S304-14 provisions on masonry column design simply adopted those for masonry wall design, their applicability to masonry columns have not been thoroughly studied either experimentally or numerically. In this research, six RC masonry columns of several influential design parameters were tested under concentric and eccentric axial loads until failure. Additionally, 20 archetype models were developed using the finite element method in SAP2000 to further assess the validity of CSA S304-14 provisions for columns of a wide range of slenderness. The American masonry design standard and TMS 402/602 was also used to provide another source for comparison between the experimental and FE model results and available code values.