Experimental Study of the Compressive Strength of Multi-Coat Renders

Abstract

Mortar compressive strength is a standard requirement and should be tested on stand-ardized specimens with a 40 mm square cross section. However, these specimens with only one type of mortar (base-coat layer) do not represent the render traditionally ap-plied to façades since that must consist of at least two layers (base coat and top coat, with different formulations and thicknesses). The in-service compressive strength of the render is therefore currently evaluated on-site by means of indirect methods (e.g. pendulum rebound hammer or ultrasound). Addi-tionally, studies on evaluating the compressive strength in multilayer coating systems, based on the laboratory analysis of the mortar samples collected in situ, are few and far between. This paper intends to discuss the method of assessing in-service compressive strength of applied multi-coat renders systems, by testing cores collected after pull-off tests. Therefore, 422 compressive strength tests were carried out to establish a relation-ship between the compressive strength of single-and multi-coat renders and identify which render layers influence the system's compressive strength. The experimental cam-paign results have shown the great influence of the top coat on multi-coat renders' per-formance and the feasibility of studying the in-service compressive strength after a pull-off test; and also allowed identifying relevant parameters to evaluate the strength of samples collected in-situ.