Clay block masonry and mortar joint interlocking

Abstract

If clay blocks with vertical voids and general-purpose mortar are used in masonry construction, interlocking will occur during placement of units and mortar. Shear strength of the clay block and solid brick masonry is usually determined in the same way, without taking interlocking into consideration. With interlocking, the tensile strength of clay blocks is reached before mortar bed joint sliding occurs. In order to consider the effect of interlocking in nonlinear analyses, three-dimensional design models were built and verified using physical model response. The shear resistance function was adopted to enable proper description of masonry response.