2nd Croatian Conference on Earthquake Engineering 2CroCEE

Masonry structures are commonly used for building residential buildings throughout the Balkans and worldwide, in urban and rural areas and areas with seismic risk. For masonry construction in seismic areas, confined masonry (CM) construction offers an appealing alternative to unreinforced masonry (URM) due to its better seismic performance. The numerical simulation of CM is often based on the Equivalent Strut Model (ESM). Such a model provides a very reasonable compromise between accuracy and efficiency and is simple enough for use in design. The purpose of this paper is to compare the results of an experimental shear compression test on a modern CM masonry wall with different ESM models. In the paper, five ESM models proposed by various authors are first calibrated and then compared with the test results. The numerical pushover analyses were performed in the SAP2000 software, and the results from the numerical simulation were compared to two experimental tests of the CM wall. The reference points of the model that gave the best alignment with experimental results were estimated using regression analyses. None of the remaining four models was taken the presence of holes in the units, the type of test (monotonic or cyclic), and the type of masonry material into account. The results show that the simple modelling of CM walls with an equivalent diagonal strut, which carries load only in compression, can accurately simulate the global seismic response and is suitable for practical applications.