Author

C. SUI (1)*, M.Y. RAFIQ (2), G. ZHOU (3)

(1) School of Civil Engineering, Queen University Belfast, Northern Ireland BT9 5AG

* Corresponding author, email: c.sui@qub.ac.uk

(2) School of Engineering, University of Plymouth, UK PL4 8AA

(3) Harbin University of Technology, China, 150006

Abstract

When measuring lateral deflections at many points in out?of-plane laterally loaded masonry wall panels, most empirical load-deflection relationships appear extremely disorderly; making it difficult to visually or numerically compare masonry panels, even two identical ones. This paper presents a way to smooth these load-deflection relationships assuming isotropic masonry panels. Two types of regressions are introduced: deformation-surface regression and load-deflection curve regression. Further, the proposed method has been verified by experimental results and correlation analysis, and this has proved that the method is reliable. The proposed method also offers the advantage that a load-deflection relationship is available at any position on the panel, which makes further numerical study of masonry panels simpler.

Key words
Regression, Load-deflections, Masonry panels, Smooth load-deflections