In this paper, brick walls as seismic load carrying elements in masonry buildings have been studied. An experimented un-reinforced brick wall (UBW) has been chosen from ref.(1) to prove the ability of analytical modeling used in this paper by which a reinforced (RBW) and a confined brick wall (CBW), designed according to Iranian Earthquake Standards, have been modeled and nonlinearly analyzed. This analysis shows that UBW practically is not able to resist horizontal loads. According to the type and direction of cracks in UBW constructed by conventional methods, it is clear that these walls do not have sufficient shear strength, and the study of hysteresis curves of brick walls shows that the confinement in CBW and reinforcement in RBW increases the rigidity and capability to displacement of walls.
