ANALYSIS AND STRENGTH OF COLD JOINTS IN CONCRETE AND BRICK MORTAR JOINTS

Abstract

It is now generally accepted that the tensile and shear strength of material is the experimental property and not the property of the materia. For testing strength of cold joints and mortar bonds there is no standard test pres-cribed so far. In this dissertation an attempt has been made to establish the two testing techniques of modified split test and direct shear test for testing cold , joints in concrete and brick mortar bonds. The testing techniques are simple and can be applied to large size specimens without much difficulty. The stress distributions in the test spectra ens liave been determined by using finite element ana1ysi-s and suita-ble coefficients for tests have been established. A systematic study has been carried, out to find the effect of delay period, revibration , surface finish and treatment with two types of concrete mixes on the split and shear strength of cold joints. Similarly split and shear strength of brick mortar joints have been obtained for various mortar mixes., mortar thicknesses and brick couplets. I~ff. ect of different parameters has been assessed and discussed quantitatively.