ABSTRACT
Brick walls of residential buildings were always damaged under severe earthquakes. Walls would crack and bend out of plane under lateral loadings, which were generated by their own mass in earthquakes. Airbags were used to apply uniformly distributed loadings on the walls in out-of-plane tests. In exist out-of-plane tests for masonry walls, vertical loadings were usually applied on the top of the walls. Since the interaction between masonry walls and the floor slabs will affect the collapse mechanism of an unreinforced Masonry structure, it is significant to study the out-of-plane behaviour of masonry walls considering the influence of floor slabs. The restrained condition of floor slabs will significantly affect the seismic behavior of unreinforced masonry walls. Optical measurement system used in the tests has showed enough accuracy in tracking the motion of walls and successfully revealed the interaction between floor slab and wall.
