Typical brick masonry walls reinforced with high-strength mortar and steel bars in the horizontal joints

Abstract

Based on investigation of rural buildings in china, there are more than 20% of the masonry structures constructed in 1970s. Thus, the old blue bricks (OBB) and old red bricks (ORB), which demolished from the typical brick masonry structures was built in 1970s, was chosen in the test. During demolishing the OBB and ORB, the original mortar was destroyed. Thus, the 1:7.8 cement mortar was chosen instead of original mortars and the 1:5 cement mortar was chosen as the reinforcement mortar. In order to know the performant of the reinforcement methods, there are three-level test plan was put forward in the study. Firstly, the mechanical properties of OBB and ORB and mortars was tested; Secondly, the experiment tested the shear strength of the reinforced and unreinforced masonry specimens along mortar joints; Thirdly, there are four walls (OBB reinforced wall and unreinforced wall, ORB reinforced wall and unreinforced wall) have been made for the pseudo-static tests. This research conducted physical performance tests on masonry bricks, masonry components, and masonry walls of typical masonry structures. Through experiments, the shear capacity of the masonry structure reinforced by high-strength mortar and steel bars can be obtained.