Influence of cement/sand ratio on behavior of cement mortar

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the influence of cement/sand ratio on behaviour of cement mortar.

Literature review was used to confirm that the cement/sand ratio have influence on the mortar strength and that its influence is not very studied. The literature points out also that the constitutive model of mortar is very important in the structural design of masonry but it has not been investigated much.

The results of study allow to forecast the mortar strength by the cement/sand ratio when the water/cement ratio is fixed (0.50). Besides, the obtained experimental results allow defining a constitutive model for sand mortar.

Other experiments would be proper to extend the research field.

The findings are of particular importance to mix design of cement mortar and to structural design of masonry. In fact, for mortar in the practices, there are no constitutive equations to use in the structural calculation, and so, normally the engineers use the constitutive equations of concrete (very rough). The idea is to find constitutive equations that, using simple and economic tests, allow to engineers to model more correctly the realty.

There are few studies which try to investigate the relationship between the behaviour of cement mortar and cement/sand ratio, as well as to study constitutive model of cement mortar. This paper contributes to bridging that gap.