The assessment of historical structures is a broad issue likely to comprise lab or in-situ testing at the structure, component or material levels, whenever relevant characterization of mechanical and physical properties is required. The material characterization of historical structures, particularly stone masonry ones as addressed herein, involve testing the constituent materials and their interfaces, namely stone blocks, interface joints (either dry or filled with mortar) and infill material. Besides stone, for which standard testing procedures are well established, interface joints and infill material testing are challenging issues. In such context, this paper reports a summary of the authors experience on characterizing materials, and respective interfaces, of historical constructions, aiming at providing input parameters’ data for numerical simulations which are deemed useful for the scientific/technical community dealing with analysis of historical structures. The main focus of the paper is on stone masonry joints’ testing and on infill material characterization by in-situ or lab tests. The reported experimental activities (e.g. borehole drilling and core sampling) can be considered as minor intrusive/destructive for the global constructions, because they are very localized and can easily repairable.

Introduction

Conservation, maintenance and retrofitting of existing structures, in general, are well-established matters of concern throughout world-wide technical and scientific community. Environmental sustainability is dictating this endeavor in order to counterbalance strong trends for new construction in emerging economy countries and wealthy societies where heritage constructions are not so present or dominant. For the particular case of historical structures, although environmental issues are also important, other concerns take the lead, namely the respect for the existing heritage, relating to whole constructions, systems, elements, materials and techniques involved in past building procedures.Therefore, interventions (or simply non-interventions) on built heritage, be it of culturally renowned historical value constructions or more modest traditional/vernacular building, should always be object of careful and comprehensive assessment to support the decisions on the need for intervention and, where necessary, for the most appropriate type complying with the widely and repeatedly stated compatibility and reversibility requirements [13].