Determining the masonry compressive strength

Masonry is a building material primarily suited for building structures under compressive load and therefore it is mainly used for vertical load transfer. The decisive characteristic to assess the load bearing capacity of such building members is their compressive strength. It can either be derived experimentally from compression tests on wall specimens or by calculation. In this paper, firstly the current procedure in the derivation of compressive strength values based on experimental compression tests is described. Furthermore, empirical approaches and theoretical models for determining the masonry compressive strength, which have been developed in the past, are presented.