Abstract:
The green wall benefits from existing buildings have ever more attracted the attention of the scientific community. Past
studies mainly focus on the ecological and environmental advantage of existing structures, while few works address the
structural benefits of the green wall. In the present study, the structural impact of the typical direct greening system referred
to masonry structures is assessed. This experimental program consists of direct shear, flexural bending and in-plane test
to evaluate the effect of green walls strengthening effect on the basic characteristic of masonry. For the in-plane test, wall
dimensions were 900 × 75 0 × 105 mm3 and consisted of 10 brick rows of 4 bricks each. The horizontal load was applied by
means of a hydraulic actuator. Results show that after the initial breaking point, the post-peak strength is higher for green
walls strengthened panels compared with that of non-retrofitted masonry panel. Even though the green wall strengthened
masonry was not showing any improvement in the initial strength, it shows the reasonable improvement in residual strength.
Also, it improves the structural behavior in terms of stiffness and energy dissipation capacity. Considering the overall performance,
green wall strengthening can effectively improve the residual structural performance of masonry houses. Additional
structural performance, to encourage retrofitting, inexpensive and easy to implement technical solutions are desirable. A
direct greening system satisfies these requirements.
