Laboratory Characterization of Solid Grade SW Brick

Personnel of the Geotechnical and Structures Laboratory, U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, conducted a laboratory investigation to characterize the strength and constitutive property behavior of solid Grade SW brick. A total of 37 mechanical property tests were successfully completed, consisting of two hydrostatic compression tests, four unconfined compression (UC) tests, 12 triaxial compression tests (TXC), two constant mean normal stress tests, four direct pull (DP) tests, two uniaxial strain tests, four uniaxial strain load/biaxial strain unload (UX/BX) tests, five uniaxial strain load/constant volume strain loading (UX/CV) tests, and two uniaxial strain load/constant strain path (UX/SP) tests. In addition to the mechanical property tests, nondestructive pulse-velocity measurements were performed on each specimen. Results from the TXC tests exhibited a continuous increase in principal stress difference with increasing confining stress. A compression failure surface was developed from the TXC results at six levels of confining pressure and from the results of the UC tests. The results for the DP tests were used to evaluate the tensile strength of the brick. During UX/BX tests, stress relaxation was evident during the change from uniaxial strain loading to biaxial strain unloading. Good correlations were observed between the stress paths obtained from the UX/BX, UX/CV, and UX/SP strain path tests and the failure surface developed from the TXC tests. The original document contains color images.