Experimental Study on Masonry Walls Using Aac Blocks

Abstract eng:
An Autoclaved aerated concrete (AAC) masonry is an efficient structural system because its light weight resulted from its material characteristics by its own cellular structure reduces seismic inertia forces under earthquake excitations. Moreover, its light weight also improves workability at its construction site and thermal insulation quality for comfortable environments. In this research, the masonry wall was constituted by two types of AAC blocks. One was reinforced with internal bar and the other was unreinforced. Both cases had grooves and vertical holes. Vertical reinforcements were cast in the holes while horizontal re-bars were cast in the groove. The grooves and holes were fully grouted in order to achieve a good bonding behavior between the bars and blocks. Compression wallette tests and shear wallette tests were carried out and the mechanical properties of the masonry wall and the behavior of the wallettes were obtained. The confinement under the compressive force and the shear reinforcing effect of the internal reinforcement in the blocks under the shear force avoided the sharp post-peak drop and enhanced displacement capacity. The in-plane behavior of bearing walls built with the AAC blocks was assessed by experimental tests. The integrated wall behavior was observed in the test results which revealed that the AAC masonry units were sufficiently bonded each other. The internal reinforcements improve those post-peak behavior and enhance displacement capacity as in the case of wallette tests. Moreover, stiffness of the 4.5m long wall was higher than that of the 1.5m long wall because a flexural deformation of the 4.5m long wall was obviously lower than that of the 1.5m long wall. The basic consideration of the bearing wall test results referring to ordinary RC beam were carried out because the integrated behavior was observed. The bearing wall was considered as a cantilever beam that has an effective cross section according to Navier’s hypothesis. The AAC and grout were considered as a homogeneous material which has an effective compressive strength and stiffness obtained from wallette tests. For the sake of easiness, only the vertical reinforcements which were cast in the both ends of the walls were considered. The strengh and deformation were calculated and then compared to the experimental results. The flexural cracking strength of the experimental result showed good agreement with the calculated values however the shear strength were lower than those calculated values. Furthermore, the flexural cracking deformation of the wall with reinforced blocks obtained from experimental result was predicted by those calculations. The yield strength and ultimate strengths obtained from experimental results were higher than those of calculation, therefore the calculation model needs further modification for improvement in its precision.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket