On the use of European and American building codes with low‐strength mortars

Abstract

The standard European building specifications, grouped in a 9-volume Eurocode, describes different approaches for determining the properties of commonly used building materials such as steel, aluminium, concrete, ... The American Concrete Institute (ACI) also offers different reports concerning concrete structures (ACI 318R), lightweight concrete (ACI 213R) and its long-term mechanical behavior (ACI 209R). Those reports, used as building codes, are also applicable when the material respects certain scope criteria. All materials which do not meet the scope criteria of Eurocode 2 or ACI reports because of their composition, properties values, or application cannot be used in the design of structures with those building codes. Regarding cement-based materials, concretes and mortars which compressive strength is lower than the minima might not be useful for structures, however they present an interesting potential for applications such as infrastructure materials, low-solicited slabs, ... When designing a structure/infrastructure made of those materials, the accuracy of any formula offered by those building codes should be checked before being used. This work shows the comparison between experimental measurements and the predictive formulas of the engineering properties (compressive and tensile strength, modulus of elasticity). The results show that the addition of specific aggregates which present low stiffness and strength modifies the relation between those engineering properties, which makes its estimation impossible without considering its unit weight. Keywords