📄 Masonry Design Tab
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Masonry Design Tab

Masonry retaining walls can also be designed in the MasterKey Retaining Wall program. 

This includes:
  • Solid (single leaf) masonry walls
  • Cavity masonry walls
  • Concrete filled cavity walls, with optional reinforcement
This tab also controls how masonry materials are defined and how strengths are obtained from the built in material tables or from user test data.


Type of Wall

Users can use the check boxes at the top of the tab to define the wall construction. This includes:

  • Masonry wall
  • Cavity wall
  • Filled cavity
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​​Note: when using Filled Cavity/Composite wall construction, the software will assume that an adequate ​shear key has ​been provided between the outer leaf and the concrete core to resist any vertical shear acting ​upon this joint.


Defining Masonry Properties

Masonry properties can be specified separately for:
  • The leaf in contact with the soil (labelled Wall)
  • The leaf away from the soil (labelled Cladding)

In most retaining wall arrangements, the soil side leaf is the primary structural leaf.

For both inner and outer leaves, enter the required masonry specifications, including:
  • Brick or block type
  • Format or group
  • Manufacturing and construction class (or category)
  • Control class
  • Unit strength
  • Mortar designation
  • Unit dimensions

Based on these inputs, MasterKey automatically selects the appropriate material strengths using its built in tables and code based calculations.


Using test results

If you have project specific test data, you can enter user defined strengths to override the table values.
This is useful where:
  • site test data is available
  • product strengths differ from the standard table assumptions
  • a conservative or verified value is required

 

 

Brickwork Cladding on an RC Wall

If your wall is primarily reinforced concrete with a brickwork outer leaf used only as cladding, do not treat the wall as masonry.
In this case:
  • Remove the tick from Masonry Wall so the main wall is designed as reinforced concrete
  • The outer leaf and or cavity fill are not included in the wall strength checks
  • The outer leaf and cavity fill are included as dead weight in the base design

This approach is typically used where the cladding is architectural and not intended to act structurally with the RC wall.

 

The unit strengths of the bricks and blocks are contained in a table and these appear in the unit strength droplists in the program. The values relate to bricks and blocks to British and Irish Standards and to the Eurocode Standard. If deemed necessary, values can be added to or removed from this table. To save the values just close the table.