Experimental Investigation of Water Penetration through Semi-Interlocking Masonry Walls

Abstract

This study experimentally investigated water penetration through semi-interlocking masonry (SIM) walls using a standard test methodology. The main objective of this study was to investigate the water-penetration performance of dry-stacked SIM walls and the effects of using gap-fillers on the testing walls. The performance of a traditional unreinforced masonry wall was used as the benchmark against which the results for SIM walls were compared. This paper reports the water-penetration performance results of several types of SIM walls investigated in this study.