Experimental investigations on the resistance of masonry walls with AAC thermal break layer

Abstract

An experimental research on the resistance of composite masonry walls is presented. The compositespecimens considered herein are load-bearing masonry walls comprising two types of masonry units(i.e. regular masonry units with one layer of thermal break elements). The focus regarding the thermalelements has been put on isolation layers made of aerated autoclaved concrete (AAC). The researchincluded extensive laboratory experiments on small and medium scale of homogeneous and compositespecimens (stacked blocks and masonry wallets) under uniaxial compression load with and withouteccentricity. The experimental results show that the interaction between masonry and thermal elementshas a positive influence on the local bearing resistance of the thermal break layer because of the stiffeningbrought by the upper masonry layers. Based on this observation, interaction factors are proposed. In addi-tion, results indicate that the global strength reduction due to eccentricity showed to be slightly moresevere for composite walls in comparison with the homogeneous specimens