Shear strengthening of wall panels through jacketing with cement mortar reinforced by GFRP grids

This paper gives the results of a series of shear tests carried out on historic wall panels reinforced with an innovative technique by means of jacketing with GFRP (Glass Fiber Reinforced Plastics) mesh inserted into an inorganic matrix. Tests were carried out in situ on panels cut from three different historic buildings in Italy: two in double-leaf rough hewn rubble stone masonry in Umbria and L’Aquila and another with solid brick masonry in Emilia. Two widely-known test methods: the diagonal compression test and the shear-compression test with existing confinement stress. The test results enabled the determination of the shear strength of the masonry before and after the application of the reinforcement. The panels strengthened with the GFRP exhibited a significant improvement in lateral load-carrying capacity of up to 1060% when compared to the control panels. A numerical study assessed the global behavior and the stress evolution in the unreinforced and strengthened panels using a finite element code.