Masonry or Concrete? Strength of burnt clay bricks and their prisms built with polypropylene reinforced mortar

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