Prediction of Characteristic Compressive Strength of Masonry through Various Methods

Abstract

In practice, the design of loadbearing walls and columns relies on the determination of the value of the characteristic compressive strength of the masonry (fk) and the thickness of the unit required to support the design loads. This research paper attempts to congregate the obtainment of characteristic compressive strength of masonry determined through empirical and statistical approaches for a local data set of values obtained from experiments. It is seen that there is a delineation in finding the characteristic strength of specimen irrespective of the input value being unit or prism data. Two methods to determine the characteristic compressive strength values are discussed in this paper. Method-I adopts the masonry unit strength and mortar strength values to arrive at characteristic compressive strength of masonry. The present study attempted four approaches in this category wherein the four approaches have predicted consistent values for the four leading masonry materials. Method-II is adopted to evaluate the characteristic value of the same four leading masonry materials where the input variable can either be unit or prism strength value and two approaches were performed in this category. The values of characteristic compressive strength obtained through both methods show convergence respectively. The characteristic compressive strength of masonry plays an important role and is a significant parameter in limit state design philosophy of masonry.