The Influence of Self-Healing Capacity of Lime Mortars on the Behaviour of Brick-Mortar Masonry Subassemblies

In this paper a methodology is proposed to investigate the influence of healing capacity of lime-based mortars in masonry specimens, by means of shear bond test. A first series of “brickmortar” triplets – after 28 days curing in lab environment – were tested in shear, with and without transverse normal stress, to determine the shear bond strength. Then, on a second series of samples, a damage is induced by loading them to a prescribed fraction (70%) of the shear bond strength, determined as above; samples were subsequently immersed in water for 3 months and re-tested at the end of this curing period. Reference undamaged samples undergoing the same curing history as the damaged ones were tested as well. The effectiveness of the self-healing capacity has been evaluated through the recovery of shear bond strength. The reliability of this approach has been investigated also by comparing the experimental results with a simplified FE model.