Abstract
This study describes an analytical proposal to predict lateral shear capacity of confined masonry walls that fail by diagonal splitting, where the maximum shear is evaluated as the dowel action of confined columns' reinforcement added to the shear capacity of the plain masonry panel. In order to validate the proposed approach, experimental test results and gathered data from literature were used. The experimental tests concerned two confined clay brick walls subjected to different level of gravity load and cyclic lateral loading. The applicability of some empirical formulae found in literature regarding the stiffness degradation was investigated. Good correlation between the predicted lateral resistance using the proposed approach and all data was achieved.
