Quasi - Static Airbag Test Facility

Welcome to the Quasi-Static Airbag Test Facility, Department of Earthquake Engineering, IIT Roorkee. This test facility has been established for testing the unreinforced and strengthened masonry walls in reversed cyclic loading with realistic boundary conditions. The sole purpose of this facility is to test the walls under uniformly distributed load under one-way or two-way out-of-plane flexural action and to develop load-displacement hysteretic curves. With state-of-the-art test facility, the lab is equipped to conduct quasi-static tests in full-scale level. This facility has been developed to improve ‘Research and Development’ and continuously being modernized to accomplish research needs in the field of structural masonry and earthquake engineering.

Test Facilities

Quasi-static airbag testing lab is unique and one of its kind in India. It houses testing facility for full-scale unreinforced and retrofitted structural walls upto a length of 5m and a height of 3m. The designed test-setup consists of loading frames with 400 kN capacity useful in testing the full-scale masonry walls in one-way or two-way bending under out-of-plane action. The setup used to test the walls consisted of an assemblage of steel framing, plywood backing frame, and high strength polypropylene airbags to apply uniform reversed cyclic face pressure. The S-type load cells and linear variable displacement transducers are available to measure the lateral force and deformation. A special arrangement to apply pre-compression load through hydraulic jacks has also been designed.

Research Area

Two-Way Out-of-Plane Testing of Masonry Walls

Research Scholar - P. Pravin Kumar Venkat Rao
Supervisor - Prof. Yogendra Singh

In this study, the unreinforced masonry (URM) walls have been retrofitted by using three different composite materials, in two-way out-of-plane bending. Welded wire mesh (WWM), basalt fibre mesh (BFM), and basalt fibre reinforced polymer (BFRP) are used to retrofit the walls. Significance of boundary condition in the behaviour of masonry walls is examined by considering H-shaped walls with different types (monolithic and simple) connections at the top. All the retrofitting techniques have shown a great potential in enhancing the strength, deformation and energy absorption capacity.