Out-of-plane testing of masonry walls retrofitted with oriented strand board timber panels

Several studies on different techniques can be found on retrofitting existing unreinforced masonry (URM) walls using varieties of materials ranging from reinforced plaster, grout and epoxy injection to fibre-reinforced polymers. Still, there is a significant lack of experimental data that consider using a material such as oriented strand board (OSB) timber panels, which can be easily sourced around the globe, and are considered to be economical and sustainable. Hence, this paper presents the first stage of a multi-phase experimental investigation into the possibility of retrofitting URM walls using OSB panels. An experimental programme with full-scale testing is expensive, therefore small-scale testing such as the approach presented here is ideal to provide insight when proposing a new retrofit technique. In this paper, flexural strength in the form of four-point bending tests has been obtained on three plain masonry prisms and six OSB retrofitted specimens (615 × 215 × 102.5 mm). The effectiveness of the proposed OSB panel retrofit techniques has been assessed in terms of flexural strength, out-of-plane load capacity and displacement. It was observed that the application of the OSB panel at the back of a masonry prism greatly influenced the out-of-plane behaviour of the retrofitted specimen by increasing its flexural capacity and also by preventing its quasi-brittle collapse.