Comportamento de pequenas paredes de alvenaria estrutural frente a altas temperaturas

Abstract

The current civil building use several kinds of materials for fencing as solid or hollow bricks or closure function and structural like the structural masonry. The codes and national laws of fire protection define a minimum period of fire resistance for walls and sealing elements. However, the great majority of the codes offer few alternatives of materials and thicknesses to define the minimum capacity for fire. Normally in the suggested alternatives, when tested, the materials exhibit superior performance. The alternative to a proper definition of time of fire resistance is testing a prototype of the wall in real scale, usually being expensive test. The purpose of this paper is to study the behavior of structural masonry walls and its components against high temperatures using furnances adapted to this end. It was studied the level of degradation of the materials singly and within the set, the increasing of load in small walls due to the temperature rising, besides the residual strength of the masonry and its constituents after exposure the high temperatures. The rate of heating of the oven did not follow Standard Curve, even so, it was possible to verify which the laws are conservative in relation to the performance against high temperatures of the materials. The walls obtained good performance against high temperatures, showing low cracking level and maintaining the structural stability. It was tested mortars with various resistances to temperature of 900ºC, seeing that this temperature was sufficient to promote the complete deterioration of materials. Mortars of 4 MPa were heated to 400ºC, noting that remained intact, showing residual strength. It was observed that the type of aggregate used in mortars affect the weight loss and stability of the material when subject to high temperatures. It was molded ceramics prisms with mortar of 4 MPa to verify the residual strength after heating to 400º and 900ºC, noting that the strength these was higher than average for the same strength of mortars subjected to the same heating. In addition, failure stress of the small wall exposed the high temperatures was very close to the average of the ceramic prisms subjected to the same heating rate.