Flexural behavior of steel reinforced brick beam utilizing interlocking brick system

Abstract

The Interlocking Hollow Brick System (IHBS) was recently used in the construction of load bearing beam and walls. The concepts behind an IHBS include the elimination of the mortar layer. The interlocking brick system investigated in this study was a load bearing brick system relied on U-shaped hollow bricks in the bed row and hollow voids in the beam that allowed the addition of reinforced concrete grout stiffeners in vertical and horizontal directions to enhance the stability and integrity of the beams. Both Normal Concrete (NC) and Self Compacting Concrete (SCC) were and concrete, grout, and mortar used as infill material. Generally, in this research, twelve specimens are prepared for full scale testing with different parameters. The size of hollow brick was 250mm x 1250 x100 and the number of rebar was 12 mm diameter. The dimensions of beam make with hollow brick and horizontal and vertical rebar was 3000mm length, 125 mm width, and 300mm height. It was found that addition of super plasticizer in beam with SCC performed better under flexural loading than NC. This behavior also allows the concrete to have a more homogeneous mix, resulting to better bonding between bricks, grout, and steel reinforcement. Different arrangement of hollow interlocking brick in bed row causes a very ductile behavior because of the horizontal reinforcement surrounded by concrete between two layers of hollow brick which it has better interaction among the rebar, brick, and grout.