Author
P SING-SANG, Y Z TOTOEV and A W PAGE
School of Engineering, The University of Newcastle, Australia

Abstract
Loadbearing masonry buildings usually include slip joints which are placed on interfaces between concrete slabs and masonry walls to allow for long term differential movements. The distribution of the applied lateral load in this building system is influenced not only by the arrangement and stiffness of the shear walls, but also by the characteristic of the slip joints. Masonry and slip joints have been extensively studied and reliable knowledge about their behaviour and modelling has been reported. However, very little research has been carried out on the system behaviour of loadbearing masonry construction containing slip joints under lateral load. Current procedures used in the determination of the lateral load distribution in the shear walls are based on linear elastic analysis and may lead to inaccurate results due to the load redistribution which occurs once slip in some joints takes place. This paper reviews previous research in the area and describes an analytical study of this effect. The analysis indicates that significant redistribution of shear loading can occur with resulting major deviations from the load distribution predicted from a conventional analysis with no consideration of joint slip.