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Compressive testing of an early 20th century brick masonry pillar

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Abstract

An experimental campaign involving the compressive testing of a brick masonry pillar extracted from a historical building is presented in this paper. The test procedure and the instrumentation are designed in order to determine, in addition to the compressive strength and global Young’s modulus of the structure, the behavior in different parts of the pillar. Material samples, representative of the external leaf and the infill, are extracted from the pillar and tested in compression. Differences in strength and elasticity of the two components are critically presented and their influence on the maximum load and failure mode of the pillar are discussed. Finally, a simple analytical model is employed in order to quantify the effect of the mismatch of Young’s modulus of the two components of the pillar. Analogies between the studied pillar and three-leaf wall masonry are drawn.

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Abbreviations

F max :

Maximum force

f cc :

Compressive strength of couplet

f ci :

Compressive strength of infill

f co :

Compressive strength of outer leaf

f c :

Compressive strength

E c :

Young’s modulus of couplet

E i :

Young’s modulus of infill

E :

Young’s modulus

ν i :

Poisson’s ratio of infill

V o :

Volume of outer leaf

V i :

Volume of infill

V w :

Volume of pillar/wall

θ i :

Increase factor due to infill confinement

θ o :

Reduction factor due to infill expansion

σ :

Stress

ε :

Strain

ε c/3 :

Limit of proportionality strain

ε c :

Peak strain

ε u :

Ultimate strain

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Acknowledgments

This research has received financial support from the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, through the research project MICROPAR (Identification of mechanical and strength parameters of structural masonry by experimental methods and numerical micro-modeling, Ref num. BIA2012-32234) and the ERDF (European Regional Development Fund).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Departament d’Enginyeria de la Construcció, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Campus Diagonal Nord, Building C1, Jordi Girona 1-3, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Anastasios Drougkas, Pere Roca & Climent Molins

  2. COTCA, Tuset 8, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Vicente Alegre

Authors
  1. Anastasios Drougkas
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  2. Pere Roca
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  3. Climent Molins
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  4. Vicente Alegre
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Correspondence to Anastasios Drougkas.

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Drougkas, A., Roca, P., Molins, C. et al. Compressive testing of an early 20th century brick masonry pillar. Mater Struct 49, 2367–2381 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-015-0654-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1617/s11527-015-0654-y

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