Articles

Ferrocement Jacketed Brick Column
Part 1
INTRODUCTION

1.1. GENERAL
As Bangladesh is a poor country, the cost of housing is a major consideration to us. Although most of the houses at our rural areas are made of wood, bamboo, brick which are easily available but these are not feasible to carry higher load. Again R.C.C columns are highly cost related in construction and application. But from both the economic and strength point of view to our country, we are to design such a column, which will be less in cost, light in weight, strong and durable enough and suitably applicable to the construction site. Ferrocement jacketed columns are considered to meet the above criteria. Significant amount of increase in load carrying capacity of brick masonry column is possible through encasement by ferrocement plaster. Brick masonry column strength enhancement was researched through ferrocement confinement in order to restore old brick masonry column strength through a retrofit arrangement.

Ferrocement is a thin composite material made with a cement based mortar matrix reinforced with closely spaced layers of small diameter wire mesh. The mesh may be made of metallic or other suitable material. Thus the very term ferrocement implies with the combination of ferrous product with cement. This matter which is a special form of reinforced concrete exhibit a behaviour so different from conventional reinforced concrete in performance strength and potential application that it must be closed as a separate material.

The idea is to impregnate fine enough network of steel with a thin layer of cement plaster, which forms a very strong flexible membrane with the properties of both steel and concrete hence named ferrocement. For small objects made of ferrocement, the steel network can be made of fine strands of reinforcing, but for bigger objects the idea is to create a fractal network of reinforcing.

In case of bricks, the most common place of use bricks worldwide throughout time is in case of residential dwellings. The shape and size of bricks can vary considerably and similarly the mortars used in case of local material availability, but the basic form of construction of houses has minor geographical variations and has changed relatively little over time.

Brick work is an assembly of brick bonded together with water. Brick size can vary considerably depending on the quality of the clay and the manufacturing tradition. Mortars are subjected to greater variation, but the basic material used in mortar mixes are sand, water and one or more of the bonding agents such as mud, clay or cement depending on local availability. Bricks might be frogged or specially shaped to create mechanical interlocking. For example, we used half bricks for our project. Brick construction is relatively simple and cheap.

From an architectural point of view brick construction is rather flexible, allowing substantial freedom in the layout of internal spaces and distribution of openings. For an environmental and structural point of view masonry performance depends on the performance of mortar and brick units.

1.2 OBJECTIVES:
The main objective of this work is to make a compression of compressive strength between precast ferrocement jacketed columns with bare brick column with different water-cement ratio. The objectives are listed below:
1. To examine the feasibility of ferrocement jacketed columns for low cost structures.
2. To examine the increment or decrement of compressive strength of ferrocement jacketed columns and bare brick columns.
3. To compare the conventionality.
4. To make comparison of cost with respect to compressive strength.

1.3 SCOPE OF STUDY:
Proposed ferrocement columns both Jacketed and bare are subjected to compression. So, that compressive strength should be tested. Also ferrocement are corrosion resistant and they have environmental advantages and it also gain sound reduction properties. For detail investigation air conditioning properties and sound reduction properties should be tested.
But the scope of the study was restricted to compressive strength test only.