• Kadi, Michael El
• Tysmans, Tine
• Vandereecken, Gilles
• Tsangouri, Eleni

Abstract

This paper studies the bonding failure under fatigue of different masonry system retrofitted by textile reinforced mortar. A series of masonry prisms are casted with red-clay bulk bricks and tested following RILEM TC 250-CSM recommendations, in a setup adjusted for cyclic (2Hz, R-0.1) testing. Several different combinations of materials for the retrofit design are evaluated: glass or carbon fibres, cement-base, lime-based and lime/cement-based mortars. To have a better understanding of the damage mechanisms and analyse the materials compatibility during testing, Acoustic Emissions (AE) and Digital Image Correlation (DIC) are incorporated into the testing procedure. Various failure modes arise when testing prisms retrofitted with different materials composition, dominantly controlled by the textile stiffness. Results show that a better compatibility between substrate and TRM and a greater fatigue life is reached when the retrofit components have relatively equivalent strength and fracture resistance to the masonry. AE proves most helpful to pinpoint the exact damage onsets but lacks accuracy to monitor damage through time due to the noise produced by the dynamic testing. DIC on the other hand, lacks precision because it needs a constant frequency for picture taking, but it performs positively at tracking the damage propagation through time.

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• Carbon
• glass
• glass
• strength
• fatigue
• cement
• acoustic emission
• lime