Dynamic out-of-plane behaviour of Dutch cavity walls: validation of numerical models

After the second world war, cavity walls became a widespread external wall type in the North Western Europe including the Netherlands. Cavity walls consist of two leaves separated by a hollow space (cavity). The leaves are commonly made by masonry bricks, blocks, and wall ties. Wall ties are used to connect the two leaves of a cavity wall and are installed during construction. The ties are meant to withstand wind pressure mostly. Recently in the north of the Netherlands induced earthquakes took place. As consequence, many cavity walls may fail due to the crisis of the ties subjected to seismic solicitations for which they were not designed. The present work investigate numerically the behaviour of cavity masonry wall systems with or without wall ties. The models were implemented taking into account the physical and geometric nonlinearities. Both nonlinear static and dynamic analyses have been performed by means of the �nite element software DIANA.