Investigation of the effects of clamp depths on the flexural behavior of walls in masonry walls

Masonry structures exhibit brittle behavior because they are made of materials that have low tensile strength such as stone and brick. Fasteners called clamps made of wood or metal elements are used to increase the tensile strength and ductility properties of these structures. There are not enough studies investigating these materials, which have very important effects in terms of building behavior. The purpose of the present study was to experimentally and numerically examine the effects of the clamp depths on the structural behavior. For this reason, an experimental study was conducted on one non-clamped masonry wall, which was called "the reference sample", and seven clamped masonry walls, whose immersion depth of clamp were considered as variables (10 mm, 20 mm, 30 mm, 40 mm, 50 mm, 60 mm, 70 mm). Masonry walls were tested in the experimental study under four-point loading according to the EN 846-9 (2016) standard and analyzed with the LUSAS (2020) program. Experiment and analysis results were compared with each other. The results showed that the load carrying capacity of clamped samples increased at least 10.53% compared to the unclamped reference sample. The ratio of the immersion depth of the clamp to the height of the stone was determined as minimum 0.3. It was also determined that a ratio higher than 0.6 reduced the load bearing capacity of the masonry wall.