1.

GENERAL NOTIONS AND CLASSIFICATIONS

Definition : A wall is a continuous, usually vertical, solid structure of brick, stone, timber or metal, which encloses and protects a building or serves to divide buildings into compartments or rooms. They carry and transmit to the foundations the imposed vertical loads from other building elements (beams, floors, and roofs) and ensure the stiffness of the whole structure. They also protect the structure from the horizontal actions of wind and earthquake, acting as wind bracing.

 Walls are defined as external or internal to differentiate functional requirements, and also as load bearing or non-load bearing to differentiate structural requirements.
load bearing walls, those that carry imposed loads, such as those transmitted by floors, roofs; non-load bearing walls which can carry just their own weight and if they are made of masonry are termed panel walls; non-load bearing walls supported by other structural elements, those related to a framed structure

 load bearing walls, those that carry imposed loads, non-load bearing walls which can carry just their own weight (made of masonry are termed panel walls); non-load bearing walls supported by other structural elements, related to a framed structure

Construction types of walls: a.- monolithic, b.- masonry, c.- frame, d.- membrane.

Functional requirements
The function of a wall is to enclose and protect a building or to divide space within the building. The main functional requirements are: 1) Stability 2) Strength 3) Durability 4) Weather resistance 5) Fire resistance 6) Thermal insulation 7) Sound insulation

Stability Together with floors and foundations, walls must ensure the stability of the whole building. The stability of the walls may be affected by foundation movement, eccentric loads, lateral forces (wind, earthquake) and expansion due to the temperature and moisture changes. Strength The walls should be designed to safely support their own weight, wind loads, the loads imposed by floors and roofs and other loads which may emerge during the life service of the building. Durability A block wall should be durable for the anticipated life of the building and require little of any maintenance and repair. Weather resistance The external walls must be designed to provide adequate resistance to rain and wind infiltration. The behaviour of a wall in excluding wind and rain will depend on the nature of the materials used in the construction of the wall and how they are put together to create a unitary faade without discontinuities.

Fire resistance The resistance of the elements of a structure to collapse, flame protection and heat transmission during a fire is expressed in periods of 2 to 6 hours in order to allow sufficient time for the safe escape of occupants during fire. Thermal insulation To maintain reasonable and economical conditions of thermal comfort in buildings, walls should provide adequate insulation against excessive loss or gain of heat, have adequate thermal storage capacity and the internal face of walls should be at a reasonable temperature. For insulation, lightweight materials with low conductivity are more effective than dense materials with high conductivity whereas dense materials have better thermal storage capacity. Sound insulation Sound is transmitted as airborne sound and impact sound. The external (envelope) walls are exposed directly to the airborne sound of the streets and they must insulate the internal space from this noise. Usually the opaque parts of the walls has enough thickness and mass per square unit to confer good acoustical insulation qualities.

 Natural lightening The natural lightening of building rooms is made through the glassed surfaces of the (building envelope) windows or doors. The objective of these spaces is to provide adequate visibility according to the functional destination of the room and also a comfortable visual communication with outdoor space.
The main aspects of this functional requirement are: to provide a adequate level of light in any place of the room; to supply a uniform natural light in the whole room avoiding the too shiny surfaces or those surfaces with too much shadow; to provide, as much as possible, natural daylight all over the year. Generally in the practice of building design and construction it is respected a proportion between the surface of the room floor and the glassed surface from the external wall of the room. The expression of this ratio is:

Sw mSf

2. CONSTRUCTION OF WALLS
2.1 Clay soil walls
The non-fired clay ground can be used for walls in the following ways: as a monolithic wall, when the clay is treaded in fixed or sliding shuttering; as non-fired bricks, shaped and pressed by hand in regular wood moulds, and bonded using a mortar of clay and lime. The blocks are dried by sun ; pressed between two "sheets" walls of wattle or sleets. Because the clay is sensitive to moisture variation and dose not resist to the water, its properties can be improved using some additional materials as sand, cement or lime and fibrous materials such as straws or tow.

- roofs with wide eaves ( 50 cm );

- the walls will be placed on high concrete or stone bases and will be insulates with horizontal waterproof membrane ;

- the walls will be rendered with a lime and clay mortar.

2.2 Stonework
Natural stone is durable but expensive and it is, therefore, used today mainly as a facing material, predominantly as a relatively thin veneer fixed to a solid background of other material. River blocks or quarry stones are used.

 Mixed masonry wall : a. concrete & stone blocks, b. brick & stone blocks masonry

Rubbed walls
These are built as random rubble walling using the stones of random size and shape as they come from the quarry, or as squared rubble walling using the stone after they have been roughly squared.

Ashlar walls
Ashlar is the name given to the stones, usually over 300 mm and up to 450 mm in depth, dressed or sawn to blocks of given dimension and carefully worked on face and beds to produce fine joints not more than 3 mm thick

2.3 Brickwork walling

Ordinary bricks (size: 240mm x 115 mm x 63 or 88 mm) - clay is ground in mills, mixed with water ( to make it plastic) and shaped and pressed by hand in a sanded wood mould. Then it is dried and fired at 900oC. Double pressed bricks (240 mm x 115 mm x 63) are bricks made from selected clay, vary heavily moulded and carefully burned so that the finished brick is vary solid and hard ( Rb is at least 120daN/cm2 or 12 N/mm2 ).

 Considering the specific gravity there are C0, C1, C2, C3 and accordingly their strength there are mark 50, 75, 100, 125, 150. Bricks are used for internal or external loadbearing walls.

Bricks and blocks with vertical cells

Bricks with horizontal cells

 Mortar for brickwork - The basic requirements of a mortar are that it hardens to such an extent that it can carry the weight normally carried by bricks, without crushing, and that it is sufficiently plastic, when applied to accommodate the varying size of brick. The materials used for mortars are sand, water, and lime or cement. The sand (which is reasonably cheap) provides the strength; the water acts as a plasticizer and lime or cement provides the matrix. The ratio of mortar is 0.190/0.230 m3 of mortar per 1 m3 of brick (worked) wall.

Bonding
In building a wall of brick, it is usual to lay the bricks in some regular pattern so that each brick overlaps partly two or more bricks below itself. The bricks are said to be bonded, meaning that they bind together by being laid across each other.

- English bond

- Flemish bond

2.4 Blockwork - walls of building blocks

Lightweight aggregate concrete

blocks

 Bonding of blockwork - the principles of bonding are the same as for brickworkbut because the range of thicknesses available the blocks are only bonded longitudinally as stretching bond and no cross bonding being required.

2.5 Walls of large prefabricated blocks

2.6 Walls of large precast panels

The large panel is a rigid wall element made of reinforced concrete ( in combination or not with insulating materials , lightweight concrete or terra-cotta products). The panels may be loadbearing, or non-loadbearing. According to the position in the building, the panels can be used as external, internal, longitudinal or transversal walls. Loadbearing panels for internal walls with a homogenous structure, made of reinforced concrete Bc20,Bc25, with 12...14 cm width for H=G+4F (ground plus 4 floors) and 1618 for H>G=4F Loadbearing or non-loadbearing panels for external walls are of the following types : one layer of lightweight concrete ; sandwich panels, in three layers, two of reinforced concrete and the third ( in between ) for thermal insulation ;

panels of two layers, the first made of hard concrete grade Bc20 or bc25 ensure strength is made as a plate with caissons. The second layer for thermal insulation is made of lightweight concrete or other thermal insulating materials; panels made of a reinforced concrete plate 5 cm thick, with ribs on edges and terra-cotta blocks forming a horizontal cell

The large precast panels joints

These panels are ( usually ) precast and on each edge steel bars or metallic plates are provided in order to be welded to the next panel or floor reinforcement or plates in the connection region. Then after the joint region has been reinforced the space between the precast panels is filled up with concrete.

2.7 Lightweight walls ( for framed buildings )

The more logical use for a structural frame is in support of some lightweight form of walling of sufficient strength to be self-supporting between frame members and with adequate resistance to the penetration of rain and wind and adequate thermal and sound insulation. The main materials used for lightweight walls are timber (boards, planks, collars, strips, plywood, chipboards) metal sheet (of aluminium, stainless steel), thermal insulating materials (expanded polystyrene, mineral wool, glass wool).

Cladding walls
1. Solid brick or masonry walls ,

2. In-fill panels

Curtain walls
Curtain walling is the name given to the system of buildings cladding with thin sheets of glass, metal or other impermeable materials, that fulfil both function of wall and window, supported by slender metal or timber frames or grids attached to the face of structural frame, in form of curtain wall system.

AUXILIARY ELEMENTS FOR WALLS

1. Wall bases - The bottom of the external wall near the ground surface is named the base. The base must support accidental shocks and environmental actions more than other parts of the wall. The base of the wall is usually 50...60 cm high from ground level.

2. Cornice - A decorative moulding at different levels of the walls (usually at the top), plain or with enrichments. External cornice directs raindrops away from the outside of the wall and helps protect the roof against fire from below.
3. Continuous belt straps or wall beams - Belt straps (or wall beams) are building elements placed in the wall under the floor plates or on the top of the foundations, in order to join together the floors and the walls and to support the tensile stresses which are generated in the walls.

OPENING IN BRICK & BLOCK WALLS

The openings for windows and doors may have in elevation rectangular shape or a curved one, especially at the top of the opening.