Laterally Loaded Masonry Panels

[LivingTheBeam]

Hi All,
I was wondering when undertaking the design a masonry panel for lateral loads, do you need to take slenderness into account? In BS5628 you have limiting dimensions for laterally loaded panels and an overall max dimension not to be exceeded. For example:

Say I have a panel simply supported on 4 sides. The block is 140mm thick. Say the panel is 4m high and 4m wide so is within the limiting dimensions of h/l and 50tef. But the slenderness is 4000/140 = 28.5 which is > than 27 so it does not meet the slenderness criteria?

Am I looking at this the wrong way? Is slenderness not the governing criteria if the wall is not taking any vertical loads?

For many examples I have looked at, some panels have been 5m wide and 3m high and they do not seem to consider slenderness?

Many thanks for any replies

 

[tony1851]

The maximum slenderness ratio of 27 is generally for unreinforced masonry walls carrying vertical loading only.
Panel walls have different criteria, including orthogonal ratio, edge support condition etc.
"Structural Masonry Designers' Manual" by Cutin et all (Blackwell pub.) has some good material on this, with examples.