Saturday Puzzle - CMU Failure 1

[JoelTXCive]

I was out running errands this afternoon and went to the Office Depot near my home.

While walking across the parking lot, I noticed the condition of the CMU wall. See below.......the entire wall is cracked. At first I though it was an architectural treatment of some sort or split faced CMU, but I don't think it is.

It appears to me that the entire wall is cracked. I think the age is about 20 (edited) 30 years.

Do you think this is CMU material failure of some sort? It doesn't look like a foundation issue to me. It seems like a CMU block problem.

What do you think? I've never seen an entire wall cracked like this.

 

[phamENG]

HTURKAK - I think the point is that, while it may be thermal or, more likely, drying shrinkage, cracking, the root cause is probably a bad batch of block. There are countless shopping centers built the same way all over the Southern, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast US (and probably elsewhere - just trying to stick to my experience), and most don't have this sort of issue but undergo similar thermal cycling. Also, what is the point of that detail? I've never seen anything like it before.

Come to think of it, I have noted similar things before, but they are extremely localized and usually in an area with prolonged wetting on un-painted block.

 

[haynewp]

A bad batch of CMU was my first impression. Whatever reason it cracked, it was destined to have a problems anyway. I've never seen cracking like that before. It would seem like water infiltration will also be a problem for this building over time.

 

[MotorCity]

A bad batch of cmu does seems plausible.

The most intriguing thing to me is that the vertical cracks generally occur in the middle of each block and sort of connect the dots between the head joints above and below each cracked block.
Its almost like it was laid in running bond and chose to transform into a stacked bond pattern.

This is in Texas so this may not be likely, but perhaps the water in the grouted cells froze (overnight?) after it was placed, expanded and cracked the block at "midspan"

 

[JoshPlumSE]

My only thought is that there is a lot of grout that shrank and not any real Temp / Shrinkage reinforcement to control the shrinkage.

I could be wrong, but that first picture (which is from far away) seems to confirm this as there is not that level of cracking right next to the control joints.

Sometimes I wonder about regions where the common construction practice is to add "ladder" type reinforcement in the mortar areas of a masonry wall. If that reinforcement is only in the mortar, I wonder how well it really helps to restrain grout shrinkage.

Certainly a traditional T/S rebar running down the center of a fully grouted cell will do a much better job of controlling shrinkage locally.

 

[ALK2415]

Bearing pressure produced shear failure for each block units [gradually at least] ...