ABSTRACT
Structural assessment of existing masonry buildings is an important task especially as they present a large building stock not only in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but in the entire West Balkan Region. The walls were exposed to cyclic load tests in order to evaluate their in-plane shear behavior and identify shear strength, stiffness and energy dissipation. Behavior of masonry walls exposed to horizontal loads strongly depends on properties of the brick- mortar interface. In order to determine the masonry compressive strength six single-wythe thick wallets with dimen-sions 51.4 x 63.2 x 12 cm were tested. The material used for jacketing is commercially available mortar with an average compressive strength equal to 5.8 N/mm2 and tensile strength of 3.2 N/mm2. Unreinforced masonry without vertical confinement is a typical way of construction for multistorey residential buildings, erected after the World War II.
