STUDIES ON REINFORCED HOLLOW CONCRETE BLOCK MASONRY

Abstract

Masonry may be defined as the assemblage of building units joined with the help of cementitious material or any accepted joining material to perform required function. It has its own reputation and performs multi-functions in load bearing structures such assupporting loads, dividing spaces, thermal and acoustic insulation, weather and fire protection etc, but it has to be provided separately in framed structures. In present scenario, there is a great demand for construction of Multi-storied residential buildings in urban area because of needful requirements. Most of such buildings are constructed using RC-framed structure. On the other hand RC-framed structures are expensive and relatively difficult to construct because of the need for formwork. Masonry has a great benefit since it does not need form work. If moderate to High strength Engineered hollow concrete blocks are available, one can think of providing reinforcement through the core of such Hollow blocks. In this project an attempt has been made to obtain the load carrying capacity of Reinforced Hollow Concrete Block Masonry through experimental investigation by considering two different percentages of steels for this totally four number of Reinforced hollow concrete block masonry prisms (RHCBM) using 12 mm diameter bar and six number of Reinforced hollow concrete block masonry prisms (RHCBM) using 8 mm diameter bar were casted and tested. Further, an attempt has been made to compare the experimental load carrying capacity with the conventional mechanics based approach used for analyzing short columns. There was a fairly good corelation between the analysis and experiments.