Influences of Bond Pattern on Compressive Properties of Earth Brick Masonry

To study the influence of different bond patterns on the uniaxial compressive performance of the earth block masonry prism and to determine the bond pattern of specimen for measuring the compressive strength of earth block masonry prism, two kinds of traditional adobe and two new types of earth brick were selected to build masonry prisms. The uniaxial compression tests were performed on three kinds of masonry to analyze the influences of bond pattern on masonry compressive properties from failure mode, compressive strength, elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio, respectively. Based on the analytic hierarchy process, the optimum specimen bond pattern for measuring the compressive strength of earth brick masonry was determined. It is shown that local failure and splitting failure occurred in stacked specimens and penetration failure caused by vertical cracks occurred in the specimens with vertical joints. The compressive strength, elastic modulus and Poisson's ratio of all kinds of masonry show the same variation regularity: compressive strength and elastic modulus in order from strength to weakness are stack bond, stretcher bond, flemish bond and inbond, and the Poisson's ratios in descending order are inbond, flemish bond, stretcher bond and stack bond. Because of the superiority of stretcher bond in applicability, operability, data variation, specimen failure mode, and reproducibility, it was suggested to use this bond pattern as the standard bond pattern for testing the compressive strength of earth brick masonry.