Arching effect in case of exterior walls with low surcharge under wind action / Ausbildung der Bogentragwirkung bei Außenwänden mit geringer Auflast unter Windbeanspruchung

It is very important to have a minimum surcharge on external masonry walls to help the wall resisting wind actions. The present contribution describes the behaviour of masonry wall under wind action with low surcharge. The behaviour has been investigated using a finite element non-linear model that considers the large displacement non-linearity. An increasingly wind load has been applied and the deformation state and the thrust line within the wall have been investigated. The results of the analysis show that the behaviour of the wall under low surcharge was greatly characterized by the arching effect. Due to the low surcharge the influence of the second order effect was very small and can be neglected.