Brick, Stone & Masonry

Brick, stone and masonry are a group of materials applied in the trade and industry activity of masonry, which involves the building of structures with mortar or stucco and one or an assortment of the following: bricks, stone, crushed stone, sand, gravel, concrete blocks, granite, limestone, marble, tile, and travertine. The building methods of masonry and its materials are globally ubiquitous and account for construction activity in essentially every country on the planet.

Despite its established practices and widely-available materials, masonry continues to be an area of R&D through advances in material sciences, ergonomics, and associated tools and equipment.

There are many benefits to employing brickwork, or masonry, including the fact that the use of brick and stone can increase the thermal mass of a building as well as the fact that brick will not require painting and, therefore, give the structure a reduced lifecycle cost. Both of these options make brick or stone a more sustainable building material, especially when used with lime mortar. In these cases, the lifetime of the building can be more than 500 years. Bricks are produced in highly energy-efficient tunnel kilns, and are 100% recyclable, adding to their green appeal. Though masonry has great compressive strength, or vertical loads, it has much less tensile strength in regards to stretching and twisting if unreinforced. Tensile strength can be strengthened, though, by building masonry piers, or simply thickening the wall. Engineering and material sciences are areas which can improve the applicability of masonry to global construction.