Bonding Behavior of Cement Mortar Retrofitting for Adobe Masonry Wallette with Groove, Wire Mesh, Shear Dowel, and Sticky Rice Paste

Abstract

Damaged adobe masonry is essential to retrofit not only for continued use by less developed populations but also for historical preservation and vernacular landmark maintenance. Coating mortar on adobe can greatly improve the static load-carrying capacity of adobe masonry Wallette. Four retrofitting methods are carried out to enhance the cooperation of mortar and adobe; these four methods focus on the factors of roughness, shear dowel, and mesh size and a novel biological and traditional Chinese binder, sticky rice pulp. The mortar coating with the four bonding enhancement methods can greatly increase both the compressive and lateral load-carrying capacities, with a maximum improvement of 177 and 743%, respectively. The bonding strength has a negative effect on the compressive load-carrying capacity; on the other hand, it has a positive effect on the lateral load-carrying capacity. A range analysis is also carried out, which shows that the shear dowel depth has the greatest effect on both load situations, followed by the wire mesh size.