| dc.description.abstract | ABSTRACT
The project presents assessing the viability of local burnt clay bricks and their prisms to give
guidance to the industry on whether to continue with concrete or masonry gives a competitive
alternative. Despite of being the common construction practice, unreinforced masonry exhibits
various problems and weaknesses leading to more preference of using concrete to build a strong
structure.
The project records the compressive strength of burnt bricks on the market in Uganda and their
respective water absorption from various brick makers. Industrial manufactured bricks had high
compressive strength of about 7.35N/mm2 much higher than 2.93N/mm2 for locally made bricks
which had high water absorption value ranging between 15% to 22.86%. Manual designing of
proposed concrete and masonry structures was done in accordance with British and Eurocode
standards to come up with the different dimensions and loads of the elements that is to say slabs,
beams, columns. The specifications of the materials used was also stated which included
concrete class to be used and the steel reinforcements.
Investigation was done on the response of masonry prisms to compressive loading for industrial
and locally made burnt clay brick with and without polypropylene reinforced mortar. Test results
for polypropylene fiber reinforced mortar joints of masonry prisms showed an increase to some
extent of compressive strength compared to prisms without; while at the same time fiber length
of 20mm was maintained. Specifically, mortar reinforced prism having 1% polypropylene
showed high values of strength compared to those of 2% polypropylene. This experiment proved
industrially made bricks to be more suitable than locally made ones depending on variables of fiber content, brick burning temperature and relative humidity of bricks | en_US |
