Author
O J KANYETO, A N FRIED, J ALI and J J ROBERTS
Concrete and Masonry Research Group, Sustainable Technology Research Centre,
School of Engineering, Kingston University, London, UK

Abstract
The design of laterally loaded masonry panels in the UK is currently undertaken in accordance with BS 5628 Part 1. The code methods are approximate and one technique is to use coefficients which give results similar to those which would be obtained using the yield line theory, which appears to work well with conventional masonry. However, closer examination of the behaviour of wall panels constructed using thin joints indicates that using the yield line method is unlikely to be appropriate. It appears that the panels behave more as concrete plates, which would necessitate the use of elastic plate theory for their design. A testing programme was undertaken at Kingston University to ascertain whether this is the case and its results are presented in this paper. Two concrete block types and one thin layer mortar type were used to build wall panels which were then tested to failure. Graphs plotted from the test data reveal a linear relationship between the load and displacement, from initial application of the load until failure. The paper concludes by recommending that an elastic theory based-method be considered for the design of laterally loaded concrete blockwork panels constructed with thin layer mortar.