L13 Masonry

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]okay final structural material final video for this course masonry that's important to note here that when we talk about masonry we are primarily talking about walls nowadays masonry is not typically used for any type of floor framing systems although back in around the 1950s there was a terracotta floor system that had become very popular so if you're doing a renovation of a space you may run into that type of system or some type of structural clay tile system as it's also called but nowadays masonry is pretty much exclusively used for walls and then the actual floor framing will be either some kind of precast concrete system or a steel system or a wood framing system So within masonry we have two basic types we have concrete masonry units which look like this you may have heard them referred to as cinder blocks but they're actually not cinder blocks cinder blocks are in older terminology for an older product that has now been superseded by concrete masonry units and so basically these are concrete Precast units that come in standard widths and standard lengths typically around 16 inches in length when you include the mortar that will be placed on either side between the blocks and in standard widths generally from about 6 to 16 inches wide and you can see the standard dimensions for blocks here and this specification comes from and CMA or the national concrete masonry Association and this manual that gives the standard sizes and section properties for Masonry is Tech 141b now it's important to note with masonry block that when you look at it from a side view you will notice that one end of these side walls of the block will be wider than another end and you might expect that the wider end of the wall would go on the bottom but that's actually not the case The Wider end of these side walls is going to be the top of the block and that's so that they can place the mortar more easily when they stack these blocks so the fatter end of the side walls is on the top and the thinner end is on the bottom now with concrete masonry units we can have either load bearing or non-load bearing and what that means is basically load-bearing walls will take floor loads and non-load bearing walls will not take any floor loads however we do still need to design non-load bearing walls to withstand their own self-weight so just because it is non-load bearing doesn't mean that there aren't any limitations from a structural perspective and now the other type of masonry is Brick and brick is often used as veneer and typically is not load bearing however as I just mentioned we still need to design it for its own self-weight and we also need to design it for any lateral loads such as wind or seismic now as far as reinforcing is concerned we can either have single wide construction where we just have one layer of block and that block may have some vertical reinforcing in it if it's used as a Shear wall for example and it will also have horizontal reinforcement and this horizontal reinforcement may not necessarily be at every single level of block we can also have Double Y construction where we have two layers of block and in this example we have a layer of CMU with a second exterior layer of brick veneer um and as mentioned previously in this course the brick veneer will be tied to the CMU with these horizontal ties stabilize it or lateral pressure and in this drawing the brick and the block are both bearing on a concrete foundation however if this were an upper level we may have a relieving angle somewhere underneath this brick that ties back to the CMU and that relieving angle would be to support the brick under its own self weight and the locations of these relieving angles will need to be coordinated with both the architect and the structural engineer as they can slightly change up the look of the brick facade now moving on we can also have openings in masonry walls and the block over these openings will need to be supported somehow for their own self-weight and we do that through the use of lentils and lentils can either be steel as in this example where we cut out a chunk of the bottom of the block and insert a double angle for the block to bear on or we can have Masonry rentals where we pour grout into one or more rows of masonry depending on the span length and insert steel rebar and essentially this will act a lot like a concrete beam and lastly we can just use precast concrete itself and typically the precast concrete lintel will be a lot shallower than the masonry lintel as you can see in this example so that's it for masonry for this course if you are interested in learning more about masonry again I would highly recommend picking up this book here or if you have further questions please feel free to email me at any time as I said back in the beginning of the semester now that you have taken this course with me I consider us to be linked for life so you can email me any questions that you have at any point in your career and I'll do my best to answer those questions the world of architecture tends to be a pretty small world so there's even a chance that we may end up working together on a project so with that I'm going to pull up our structural material performance Matrix one last time and note that since we are only talking about masonry walls here there are a few categories that don't really apply for masonry however the important things to note here are that masonry performs very well for fire resistance hence why we use them typically for fire rated wall assemblies masonry also has very high environmental resistance hence why we use brick veneer for exterior facades masonry walls can also accommodate openings and so they are generally fairly good for MEP integration also holes in masonry walls can typically be made post-construction and a renovation scenario fairly easily due to the modular layout Masons also tend to be very quick with putting up masonry walls however masonry block is very heavy and generally they do require a fair amount of energy to produce and so with that I would just like to say thank you for paying attention throughout this course and for all of your effort I know that Structural Engineering is typically the least favorite topic for Architects so I really appreciate you sticking through and hopefully you've learned something valuable for your career and so with that good morning good afternoon and good night and I'll see you next time