Experimental Study On The Mechanical Properties Of The Autoclaved Aerated Concrete Bearing Masonry

As a new type of energy-saving building material, Autoclaved aerated concrete(AAC) is hopeful to be widely applied in load-bearing structures. Thus, on the basisof the thorough grasp of its physical performance, this paper conducts theexperimental study on the physical and mechanical properties of sand-lime-AAC(SLAAC) block as well as the AAC bearing masonry with thin bed mortars. It issupposed to help to the revision and the improvement of the relevant specificationsand codes in the future.In this paper, many material properties are firstly presented according to the tests.Although the influence of water content on slag-sand-AAC (SSAAC) is greater thanthat on SLAAC, the compressive strength of SLAAC still decreases greatly with thegrowth of water content. The relationship between the water content and thecompressive strength can be described. The strain of SLAAC, ranging from 1700με to3000με, , is much bigger than that of SSAAC when it is at the peak of the stress-straincurve. However, its Young's modulus is considerably low.Many factors which influence the masonry strength are listed based on the tests ofmasonry axial compressive strength. Besides the mortar strength and the AACstrength, the masonry strength is also affected by the construction quality and blocksizes. A formula to calculate masonry compressive strength is suggested in the paperand the computational results show good agreement with the tests. The stress-strainrelationship of the compressive masonry can be well described too. The AACmasonry can make the best use of the AAC block and the strength is so high that it issuggested to be used in the load-bearing structures for its great efficiency.Finally the experiments on the shear strength of AAC masonry with stacked bondare depicted. Based on the experiments,some important factors which influence theshear strength can be obtained in this paper. These factors include mortar strength,construction quality, test methods, the thickness of the bed mortar and block sizes.Then a computational method to estimate shear strength with different bed mortars issuggested. The numerical outcomes agree well with the experimental results.