Fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composites are more and more used in the building trade for the set up of reinforcing and repair devices. As known, FRP composites offer higher strength and Young modulus than traditional steel devices, but nowadays technologies are not able to produce pretension of the wrap in civil engineering strengthening applications. Moreover, when confining compressed masonry columns with FRP composites, the effective contribution of the composite cannot be accurately evaluated. In the present paper, some theoretical relationships available in literature are analyzed, regarding the evaluation of confinement effect on wrapped masonry columns. The reliability of these formulations is investigated, comparing the theoretical values with unixial and triaxial experimental test results; unixial tests were carried out both on plain and wrapped brick masonry samples. Experimental results are shown not to fit to the formulas of the literature and the reasons of the discrepancy were searched for...

This research deals with the mechanical characterization of laminated glass beams (glass-interlayer-glass) subjected to bending, with the main purpose of evaluating the coupling that the interlayer is able to establish between the glass sheets; in fact, the interlayer provides the glass plies with the ability to work more or less jointly. Four-point-bending tests (constant load) were performed on glass beams laminated with different interlayer plastic sheets. Shear tests (constant load) were performed on laminated glass specimens to determine the viscosity properties of the interlayer, when laminated between glass sheets. The parameters of viscosity, determined by the shear tests, make it possible to reproduce the time-dependent behavior of the composite beam, both numerically and by means of a closed-form procedure. The experimental results were compared with those obtained with the theoretical model and with the numerical simulation. The comparison among the different polymer interlayers shows that they...