Experimental testing and comparison between historical and traditional masonry brick

The historical masonry brick buildings are important structural symbols due to their old construction time. It is necessary to investigate the mechanical properties of the masonry brick building to evaluate the structural behaviour during service life. Here, the research focused on finding out the compressive strength of brick unit, mortar and brick prism model. Two types of mortar and brick unit are adopted, historical and traditional, and the comparison between the results is implemented. The historical brick and mortar used experimentally in this study were taken from the Imam Ali holy shrine structure (built 300 year before) during its rehabilitation. The traditional brick is Iranian yellow brick which is used in repairing process of two minarets now. The traditional mortar is the Iraqi gypsum which is available in the local market. The tests of mortar cubes and brick units are conducted according to Iraqi Standards and the British Standards is adopted for brick prism models. The experimental testing is carried out in the lab of faculty of engineering at university of kufa. The strain gauges and LVDT instruments are used with the acquisition system device to record and save data. The results of compressive strength and mass density for historical and traditional brick unit and mortar are exhibited. Also, the results of compressive strength, stress-strain curve, load-displacement curve and modulus of elasticity for historical and traditional brick prism models are displayed and discussed. In addition, the compressive strength of brick prism models using empirical equation are estimated. The comparison between the results of historical and traditional brick units, gypsum mortar types and brick prism models are carried out. The historical brick prism model has mechanical properties weaker than the traditional and there is a difference in the compressive strength of the historical brick prism model between the empirical equation and testing results.