Experimental Study On The Mechanical Properties Of Composite Hollow Concrete Block Masonry

In order to solve the problem of the decrease on the energy sources and the arable land, and the environment pollution extending in the construction,our government have issued policy about energy saving, land saving, more utilization of the trashes. National Wall Innovation office announced that 160 cities should forbid to use solid clay bricks after June 30 in 2003 in the file of【2000】06. Therefore, the development and popularize of the new materials and structures which can replace the solid clay bricks is the most important and urgency task to our engineers. Hollow Concrete small blocks will be the leading materials instead of solid clay bricks. However the hollow concrete small blocks have the disadvantage such as the insufficiency of heat preservation and insulation, increasing the wall cracks, water permeating more easier and decorating more difficult. In order to solve these problems we developed the composite hollow concrete blocks, which not only can bear the loads but also preserve heat and will be adopted widely. The experimental study on the structural and material property of masonry walls constructed by the composite hollow concrete small blocks with foamed polystyrene is presented in this paper. Financial support for this work was provided by Jiangsu province construction department.This kind of blocks have the advantages of energy saving, land saving, environment protecting and easy to construct etc. However, the information and experimental results of this kind of masonry wall and the code about the engineering application are also few. This will affect the use of these new materials to a certain extent. The experimental study on the structural and material property of the masonry walls made of composite hollow concrete blocks with foamed polystyrene was done; some conclusions and suggestions were given in this paper. Hopefully these results will be useful for application and designing of these new materials on engineering.The main study contents are as follow:1,Nonlinear analysis on wall models simulated practical walls under eccentric and axial compression load is made with FEA program-Ansys. The analysis results will be helpful for designing and application of construction engineering.2,Compression experiments were made and got the compression strength of single integrated block. Then processed test and got the compression strength of the same series of block without foamed polystyrene layer, and compared the two results of the compression strength.