Flexural behavior of rubberized concrete interlocking masonry walls under out-of-plane load

Waste and industrial by-products, such as crumb rubber and fly ash, are being utilized as raw materials for making various masonry products. Rubberized concrete interlocking brick (RIB) is a newly developed product incorporated 10% crumb rubber, as a partial replacement for sand, and 56% fly ash, as a partial replacement for cement. The study experimentally emphasized understanding the behavior of masonry walls made of the developed rubberized interlocking bricks under out-of-plane load, with and without precompression load. The compressive strength of the developed loadbearing RIB was 18.4 MPa. The results of flexural strength, moment–curvature relationship, displacement responses, joint opening, and failure modes for masonry walls made of the developed RIB under lateral load parallel to the dry bed joints are discussed. An analytical analysis to predict the cracking flexural load is presented and compared with the experimental results. The results show that by increasing the pre-compression load, flexural strength, and moment capacity of the rubberized interlocking masonry walls increased linearly. The lateral displacement was 10.82, 24.99, and 29.69 mm for masonry walls subjected to a 0, 56, and 112 kN pre-compression loads, respectively. Flexural failure along the width of masonry walls with a course opening at mid-height was the dominant failure mode. It can also be concluded that the theoretical cracking flexural load closely matches the laboratory load.