Potential of Fired Clay Bricks for Use as Short Beams and Columns

Abstract

A clay soil collected from Pago village, along Minna-Paiko road in Niger state, Nigeria, was molded int bricks and fired at temperature of 600°C. The molds were formed specially with grooves and protrusions of varied depths and thicknesses on both sides. The molds with groves and protrusions were separately used to cast the various bricks. The bricks with protrusions were then fitted into those with grooves using cement slurry of 0.7 water-ement ratio to form short beams. These arrangements categorized the the interlocking bricks into three groups (A, B and C), based on depth and thickness of the protrusions and grooves. The results indicated elements formed, interlocking clay bricks of category B, which has higher space between the grooves and protrusions, for cement slurry binder, gave highest compressive strength of 3.7N/mm2, which satisfy the strength for load bearing walls according to Nigeria Industrial standard. Also, elements formed, interlocking clay bricks of category A, which has longer and deeper protrusionand grooves respectively, gave the highest flexural strength of 0.48N/mm2, which is far above the zero flexural strength attributed to masonry clay bricks. This study showed that incorporating relatively longer and deeper protrusions and grooves respectively, as interlock of fired clay bricks will make them withstand reasonable flexural strength that can make the elements serve as short beams.