Evaluation of Clay Brick Durability Using Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity

Abstract

Many failures in the building envelope are associated with disintegration of the brick veneer. The evaluation of durability is important for proper selection of the brick. The American and the Canadian standard methods for evaluating the durability of brick are time consuming and involve destructive testing. As a result, limited tests are carried out on the bricks during selection, leaving uncertainty about their durability and performance. Nondestructive testing would reduce the time and cost of evaluation. Therefore, a study was undertaken to investigate the feasibility of using nondestructive testing methods for evaluating the properties of bricks and thereby possibly their durability. The ultrasonic pulse velocity method was selected for the study. Based on the study, new durability provisions were derived using the pulse velocity to identify durable and nondurable bricks. These provisions were validated using a different set of bricks. At this stage, the new provisions can be used only along with the ASTM method, but it can avoid the time-consuming ASTM procedure in many cases.