On-site pull-out tests of steel anchor spikes applied to brickwork masonry

Externally Bonded (EB) composite materials are becoming a widespread solution for strengthening interventions on masonry buildings, even Cultural Heritage structures, due to several positive aspects mainly related to their high strength-to-weight ratio. In recent years, beside common epoxy-based Fibre-Reinforced Polymers (FRP), steel-based composites have been proposed: they are composed by unidirectional high-strength steel cords that can be coupled to either organic (Steel Reinforced Polymers, SRP) or inorganic (Steel Reinforced Grouts, SRG) matrices, in relation to their optimized spacing. The bond behaviour of all these EB composites has a strong influence over the effectiveness of interventions, since the detachment of reinforcements from the substrate generally represents the weaker failure mechanism. In order to improve this aspect, several anchorage devices have been proposed, being spikes, among them, one of the most suitable for masonry supports. Spikes are made of a bundle of fibres partly in the form of a bar, to be inserted and glued into a hole drilled in the substrate, and partly loose, to be spread and connected to reinforcement strips. Despite their importance also from a design point of view and considering the variety of shapes and materials, there are still few investigations in this field, being clear that both the spike-to-reinforcement and the spike-to-masonry connections need to be studied. Focused on the spike-to-masonry connection, this paper is aimed at investigating the performance of steel cord spikes applied to existing clay brick masonry, by means of overall 39 pull-out tests carried out taking into account the bonded length (equal to the hole depth), the type of embedding material and the number of steel cords forming the anchorage. The main results of this experimentation are herein presented and discussed.