Out-of-plane behaviour of slender reinforced masonry walls for tall single storey buildings: Design procedure

As shown by past earthquakes, slender unreinforced walls can suffer of out-of-plane failure. In order to avoid this vulnerability, reinforced masonry is often used to build single storey buildings, such as commercial and industrial buildings. Those structural typologies are constituted by one-storey slender walls with deformable roofs, made with prefabricated elements or with timber beams. Therefore, the main issue of structural response of these buildings is related to the out of plane behaviour of the tall walls subjected to horizontal action, such as the seismic action. In the present study, a design procedure for slender reinforced masonry walls of one-storey building is proposed. The out of plane capacity of masonry wall is computed adopting a simplified method, reducing the interaction axial force-bending moment domain for masonry walls accounting the second order effects. A simplified case study is carried out, focusing on out of plane behaviour of slender walls considering the influence of in-plane roof stiffness on seismic action distribution over the walls.