Experimental investigation of in-plane shear and compressive behaviour of dry-stacked interlocking concrete masonry
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Dry-stacked interlocking masonry (DSIM), also known as mortarless masonry, is an alternative construction technique that replaces conventional mortar joints with integrated interlocking shear keys. This system offers significant advantages, including faster construction times and improved cost efficiency. Nevertheless, a notable gap exists in the literature regarding the quantitative assessment of the in-plane shear strength of mortarless masonry systems, particularly with respect to the effects of grouting and reinforcement. Therefore, an experimental program was conducted involving fifteen DSIM assemblages, each measuring 1.20 m × 1.20 m, constructed using mortarless units called Sparlock, with various grouting conditions and vertical and horizontal reinforcement ratios. The assemblages were tested under diagonal compression loading to evaluate their in-plane shear performance in terms of shear strength, modulus of rigidity, and ductility. Additionally, six DSIM prisms were tested under uniaxial compression to evaluate the compressive behaviour of both grouted and ungrouted configurations. The experimentally obtained shear strength values in addition to DSIM walls from literature were further compared with the predicted values derived from existing design standards developed for conventional masonry construction to assess their applicability to dry-stacked interlocking systems. The experimental results showed that DSIM assemblages lacking horizontal reinforcement experienced premature failure, characterized by brittle sliding along the dry joints. In contrast, the horizontally reinforced specimens exhibited a more ductile response, characterized by progressive crack development and enhanced deformation capacity prior to failure. This could be attributed to the layout of the blocks, which is stack-patterned and not staggered. The increase in vertical reinforcement within fully grouted specimens led to a 78 % enhancement in shear strength compared to partially grouted assemblages. Similarly, increasing the horizontal reinforcement ratio in partially grouted assemblages resulted in a 33 % improvement. The shear strength predictions obtained from conventional masonry design equations showed poor correlation with the experimental results, primarily due to the fundamentally different shear-resisting mechanisms present in the DSIM systems. To address this limitation, an equation was proposed to calculate the shear strength for different DSIM systems. The findings of this study contribute to the quantification and potential codification of the shear behaviour of DSIM systems.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".