Out-of-plane flexure behaviour of fly ash-lime-gypsum brick masonry walls

Industrial by-products such as fly ash is being used for the manufacture of building products such as fly ash bricks. This paper is focused on understanding the out of plane flexural behaviour of fly ash-lime-gypsum (FaL-G) brick masonry, through experimental investigations. Results of the flexure strength of FaL-G brick masonry walls (under different pre-compression) in the two orthogonal directions, are discussed. Load displacement and moment-curvature relationships for the two cases presented. The cracking flexural stress using linear elastic analysis was predicted and compared with the experimental value. The results reveal that (a) the flexure strength of FaL-G brick masonry walls increases linearly with the increase in pre-compression, (b) the flexure strength parallel to bed joints is two times more than that of the flexure strength perpendicular to bed joints under zero pre-compression, (c) lateral displacements for the FaL-G brick masonry walls are larger for the case of bending perpendicular to bed joints when compared with those for bending parallel to bed joints and (d) The cracking flexural stress for the FaL-G brick masonry can be predicted closely with those of experimental values using linear elastic analysis.