Mechanical properties of Adobe masonry in shear test

There are many adobe buildings in small towns and villages of China, which have low shear strength of mud in joints and suffer great damages in big earthquakes. Mud with three different proportions of soil and sand are used in adobe masonry to discuss shear behavior and strength in this paper. Adobe samples in tests were laid by mud with clay-silt soil: construction medium sand at ratios of 1:0.8, 1:1.0 and 1:1.2 respectively, and adobe brick at ratio of 1:1.0 which has good workability. Short straws are mixed into mud and brick at 0.5% by weight. By monotonous loading procedure parallel to bed joint, two bed joints in prisms behave double shear failure in sequence. Meanwhile shear strengths and force-displacement curves are also obtained. Fitting equation for adobe shear strength is calculated, and the calculated results are agree with test results well. Shear failure of adobe masonry behaves brittle from force-displacement curves.