STRUCTURAL BEHAVIOUR OF REINFORCED BRICK WORK

Abstract

Presently the building industry is facing an acute shortage of cement for construction purposes. The requirement of cement for housing and other projects is much larger in com-parison with the production of cement. Economy in the consumption of cement through improved design techniques and adopting other materials for construction offer one of the solutions for this shortage. The use of brick work dates back to prehistoric times and presently it is the back bone of building industry. Gen-erally floors, and roofs slabs are constructed of reinforced brick, reinforced concrete and reinforced brick concrete. out of these the first one requires the least amount of cement. Hence in order to economise on cement, the slabs should be of reinforced brick as far as possible. This practice can certainly be followed within certain limits in areas where good quality bricks are available. 1 „ 1 REINFORCED BRICK WORK Reinforced brick masonry, as the name implies, consists of brick masonry in which steel reinforcement is embedded and so placed that the masonry will have greatly increased resis-tance to forces which produce tensile, shearing and compressi-ve stresses. Presently the reinforced brick masonry is designed on the same principles as commonly adopted for reinforced cement concrete.