TY - JOUR A1 - Fontana, Patrick A1 - Miccoli, Lorenzo A1 - Grünberg, U. T1 - Experimental investigations on the initial shear strength of masonry with earth mortars N2 - In this paper, a comparative study on the initial shear strength of masonry with earth mortars is presented. Triplet tests were carried out to characterise the shear bond strength of five different types of earth mortar, three purely mineral and two with vegetable additives (wood and straw chaff), using calcium silicate blocks. In spite of their lower bulk densities, mortars with chaffs reached a value of compressive strength comparable to the values shown by the purely mineral mortars. The characteristic initial shear strengths of all the tested earth mortars were between two and five times higher than the minimum values for initial shear strengths required by standards. To assess the influence of blocks pre-wetting, a comparison between calcium silicate blocks and earth blocks was performed to evaluate the results obtained from the standard test procedure compared to the more common practice of using earth mortars in combination with earthen blocks. KW - Earth mortar KW - Sand-lime block KW - Earth block KW - Initial shear strength KW - Shear bond test KW - Masonry KW - Triplet test PY - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1504/IJMRI.2018.10009831 SN - 2056-9459 SN - 2056-9467 VL - 3 IS - 1 SP - 34 EP - 49 PB - Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. CY - Olney, Bucks AN - OPUS4-43692 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -