Experimental Study on Clay Brick Masonry Assemblies Strengthened with Basalt Textile Reinforced Mortar

This research proposes the use of a basalt textile-reinforced mortar (TRM) system as an overlay to strengthen brick masonry. A comparison of the strength performances, namely, the compressive strength, flexural bond strength, and shear bond strength, between unreinforced brick assembly and basalt TRM–reinforced brick assembly was made. The reinforced specimens exhibited improved strength performance, in particular, the flexural bond and shear bond strengths whereby more than a two-fold increase was observed. Additionally, the coefficient of variations in the compressive and flexural bond strength of brick assemblies was reduced when reinforced with the basalt TRM.