Compressive Strength Test of Interlocked Blocks Made with High-Mechanical-Performance Mortars

Abstract

Conventional masonry pieces are simple construction elements used for the building of houses for a long time. Nevertheless, the rapid growth in the demand for social and middle-class housing in developing countries has forced engineers to develop cheaper and new creation processes and systems with better features and qualities. In this sense, to obtain an optimization in masonry pieces, the following must be considered: 1) the material from which it is fabricated and 2) the design (shapes and geometry). As an alternative, in this work, we present the design of interlocked concrete blocks with measures of 12.5 cm wide, 25 cm in height, and 40 cm in length, made with mortar mixtures with high mechanical performance, with which wall sections were built (masonry assemblies of 62.5 × 60 × 12.5 cm and prisms of 62.5 × 40 × 12.5 cm) and then characterized according to standards of the mechanical compression tests. The obtained mechanical compressive strengths were 177.72 kg/cm2 in the unitary masonry pieces, 47.4 kg/cm2 in prisms, and 3.98 kg/cm2 in diagonal compression tests. This type of masonry materials and their assembly procedure can be useful for the manufacture of middle-income and social housing in developing countries.