Shear capacity of interlocking compressed stabilized earth block masonry panels

An experimental study was conducted to investigate the shear performance of reinforced and unreinforced interlocking compressed stabilized earth block (ICSEB) masonry wall panels. Forty-eight wall panels were fabricated using Auram 295 blocks and subjected to diagonal-compression. The influence of coir fibres, channel block, type of reinforcement (steel and bamboo) and arrangement (mesh and vertical) on wall shear behavior were studied. Cracking patterns, failure modes, load-deformation response and shear capacity were analyzed and discussed. The feasibility of using conventional masonry analytical equations in estimating the shear load capacity of wall panels was also evaluated. The test results demonstrated that wall panels without bamboo/steel reinforcement failed suddenly in a brittle manner and split into two parts, whilst bamboo/steel reinforced grouted wall panels behaved in a more ductile manner and remained intact after the failure, irrespective of presence of fibres. The incorporation of fibres effectively increased the shear load and deformation ability of wall panels, irrespective of the variables examined. The panels reinforced with steel/bamboo showed a significant improvement in shear load capacity of about 20.33% to 162.94% and in deformation capacity of around 48.47% to 258.29% when compared to the panels without reinforcement. The adopted analytical equations inaccurately predicted the shear capacity of wall panels.