ABSTRACT
Brick masonry walls of varying architectural patterns are commonly seen in many colonial period structures around the world. Subsequently with a view to understanding the monotonic and cyclic compressive characteristics of such brickwork, an experimental programme was carried out in this research. Fourteen brickwork wallettes with the geometry depicting the colonial buildings were built with two types of clay bricks and a lime mortar to simulate the strength characteristics close to the masonry found in those buildings. The failure modes, strengths and deformation characteristics of the masonry are described. It is shown that the monotonic compressive strength of masonry is consistently higher than the cyclic compressive strength. Further the monotonic and cyclic compressive stress-strain characteristics of the brickwork wallettes of varying bond patterns are discussed and their similarities and differences between single-leaf brickwork reported in the literature are examined. An analytical expression for the cyclic compressive stress-strain characteristics of the brickwork with lime mortared wallettes is also presented.
