Clay Tile Walls 1

[dougantholz]

I am wondering if anyone out there in this engineering community has had any experience with clay tile walls.
A number of older building throughout the US that were built between 1880 and 1950 have interior, non-load bearing, walls that are constructed of 4 and 5 inch hollow clay tiles. These tiles only appear to be adheared with mortar.
In my experience with these walls, there is no reinforcing put in them either vertically or horizontally.
Has anyone else out there worked with this technique? And, have any of you ever found reinforcing in the walls?
Thanks
Doug Antholz

 

[Taro]

We have done several seismic retrofits of buildings with HCT partitions. Our strategy was to provide strongbacks to support the walls and cut down the spans of the unreinforced masonry.

You could also try to reinforced the walls with grout and rebar, but the constructibility of this scheme might be difficult. It might also add too much weight for the existing framing.

Another option would be to laminate it with fiber wrap. That wouldn't add much weight, but it could get expensive.

 

[dougantholz]

Thanks Taro. Does anyone else know about the original construction? Does it have any ties in it? Thanks

 

[ishvaaag]

In Spain nearly all bluildings in the XX century and maybe even more than half presently have their inner partitions built this way, ladrillo hueco. It is even used (our team itself did where the local custom so stood, Marbella, by the way) in 10" thickness as bearing walls for houses. Most of this amount of construction has no a single rebar anywhere. If some, there are flat ties to steel or concrete columns just to avoid the joints appear there when the gypsum is applied.
Of course then, Spain is barely critical respect earthquakes (worrying if some big comes!)

Reinforcement associated to cooked clay masonries was here always mainly in the context of better construction bearing wall, full section or nearly so, where ties between parallel walls are used to get them working at least partly as a single bearing wall, similarly to the sandwich panels quoted recently.

Damage to these partitions or walls has been coming mainly from improper consideration of deflections, since EQ are uncommon and weak.

Some cases of external walls loosong bearing and falling have also happened; in this context the past decade inaugurated the practice of reinforcing the brick walls here, both horizontally and vertically in way similar to masonry units of concrete, but the practice is presently very uncommon, and tradition supports the unreinforced schemes...not contradicted by the nonexistent till now big earthquakes.

 

[JAE]

I used clay tile walls in south Texas some years ago as exterior, non-load bearing walls between steel columns. The roof load was taken by large channels that ran just inside the wall. The clay tile was linked to the steel columns with wire ties at 16" o.c. No other reinforcing was used. In fact, the walls were never actually detailed on the structural plans.

Additional vertical wind columns were added to keep the H/t ratio to an acceptable limit (don't remember what that limit was).

 

[dik]

I've seen them used for structural and non-structural purposes, non-reinforced and marginally reinforced as lintels. Also seen them used as voids between concrete joist floor system and as a backup construction to a terracotta facade.

My encounter with them is usually as non-bearing partitions. The little 'flutes' on their surface being used to secure the 'scratch' coat for a plaster wall finish. I'm not sure if the plaster or the door frame held them over door openings <G>; it sure wasn't reinforcing.