Development of design methodology for mortarless masonry system: Case study – a resettlement housing colony

As the conventional masonry construction is labour and time intensive, it faces challenges from new generation materials and construction techniques. Mortarless masonry system (MMS) is considered as an alternative to conventional masonry as it minimises skilled labour requirement and improves the construction productivity. Despite these advantages, the uptake of the MMS system is hindered by the lack of guidelines in the masonry design standards. Therefore, in this paper, an attempt has been made to extensively review the literature and develop simple design guidelines for the MMS. Primarily the methodologies have been developed to design MMS against axial compression, out-of-plane flexure and in-plane shear actions. The developed guidelines have been applied to the structural design of a conceptual MMS detached house for war affected community resettlement housing scheme in Sri Lanka. The developed design procedures reveal that the MMS can be used for loadbearing actions; however, it requires strengthening for out-of-plane flexure and in-plane shear actions against the cyclonic and seismic actions.