Ronald Lumantarna

Compressive, Flexural Bond, and Shear Bond Strengths of In Situ New Zealand Unreinforced Clay Brick Masonry Constructed Using Lime Mortar between the 1880s and 1940s

AbstractThe importance of sufficient masonry mortar joint-bond strength when a structure is subjected to in-plane and out-of-plane loads has been emphasized by several researchers. However, masonry unit/mortar bond strength is difficult to predict, and performing mechanical tests on existing masonry buildings to determine masonry flexural bond and shear bond strengths is generally not practical, such that predictive expressions relating the masonry flexural bond and shear bond strengths to other masonry properties are desirable. Although relationships between brick/mortar bond and compressive strength have been investigated previously by researchers located in many different parts of the world, most of these studies were laboratory-based and did not include testing of existing masonry buildings within their scope. The writers aimed to characterize the material properties of New Zealand unreinforced clay brick masonry (URM) buildings that were generally built between 1880 and 1930, with in situ testing and...

Uniaxial Compressive Strength and Stiffness of Field-Extracted and Laboratory-Constructed Masonry Prisms

AbstractMasonry material characteristics such as compression stress-strain behavior and the relationships between brick, mortar, and masonry compressive strengths are required for the detailed analysis and assessment of masonry structures. These properties have been investigated previously, but most past studies were laboratory based and did not include within their scope the testing of existing masonry buildings. This study aimed to characterize the compressive strength and the compression stress-strain relationship of vintage clay brick masonry used in New Zealand unreinforced masonry (URM)-bearing wall buildings that were generally constructed between 1880 and 1940. Testing was performed on 45 masonry prisms that were extracted from eight New Zealand historic URM buildings and on 75 masonry prisms that were constructed in the laboratory using 14 different brick/mortar combinations. It was found that the laboratory-constructed sample test results adequately replicated those from the field-extracted samp...