Detailed investigation of compressive and bond strength for sustainable brick masonry developed by using various types of bricks and green mortars

Abstract

This experimental study attempts to clarify the compressive and bond strengths of sustainable brick masonry developed by combining three distinct types of bricks and three different types of green mortars, in comparison with the brick masonry comprising of control cement mortar. The masonry prisms were prepared by using handmade clay bricks (HB), fly ash bricks (FB), and machine-made clay bricks (MB) in addition to the control cement mortar (CM), fly ash mortar (FAM), bagasse ash mortar (BAM) and calcined clay cement mortar (C3M). The compressive strength of brick units and masonry mortar cube specimens was investigated. The compressive strength and flexural bond strengths were determined by conducting the tests on prisms composed of five stacked bricks and seven stacked bricks, respectively. While the masonry triplets were utilized to evaluate the shear bond strength of brick masonry. The experiments involving prisms and triplets were conducted at 14, 28, and 90 days to investigate the effect of curing age. The influence of mortar and brick compressive strength on the compressive strength of masonry prisms is also studied. The compressive strength of HB exhibited the highest value compared to both FB and MB. The C3M demonstrated superior compressive strength in comparison to alternative mortar types. As a result, the compressive, shear, and flexural bond strengths of HB-C3M prisms exhibited the highest values across all stages of curing in comparison to other types of masonry prisms. Since, it takes time for the compressive strength of BAM to develop, therefore, the masonry prisms made of BAM demonstrated better performance at longer age.