Author

L. ABDOLT, R. AMI SAADA, F. MEFTAH & A. MEBARKt
Laboratoire de Mecanique, Universite de Marne-La-Vallee,
5 Boulevard Descartes, Cite Descartes, 77 454 Marne-La-Vallee Cedex 2, France
‘ Corresponding author, Tel.: +33 160 95 77 93; Fax.: +33 1 60 95 77 99.
E-mail address.: Leila.Abdou(p).univ-mlv. fr

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to study the shear behaviour of the brick-mortar bed interface by performing tests on half brick couplet specimens. Firstly, load/unload shear tests were performed to analyse the type of shear behaviour in the joint mortar. Secondly, the interface characteristics were derived from linear regression while assuming the Mohr-Coulomb criterion. In particular, the influence of holes on the interface behaviour was studied by comparing results obtained with both solid and hollow bricks. The experimental results show that there is no stiffness degradation even in the softening regime. However, it seems that the presence of holes increases the shear stiffness but does not affect the internal friction angle of the interface. In order to describe the interface behaviour observed experimentally, an etastoplastic model is developed. Hence, two criteria are used to represent both the tensile and the shear behaviour. This model is implemented in a finite element code, and allows the shear tests to be simulated.