Experimental Study of the Mechanical Behavior of Dry-Stone Structures’ Contact

Abstract

Dry-stone structures are traditional constructions that are present everywhere around the world, their stability mostly working by gravity. Their out-of-plane response is very brittle and is fully controlled by the geometry as well as the contact properties between stones. Two main local failure modes of dryjoint contact have been identified that lead to the global failure of the structure: i) sliding and ii) joint opening. This contribution presents the results of an experimental work aiming at evaluating the effect of sliding and joint opening in a dry-joint at two different scales: i) couplets, ii) structures made of few (up to 5) between stones at different scales: couplet, structures made of few (up to 5) blocks/units or more complete walls. Different stones have been employed to quantify potential differences: i) solid concrete blocks of 250 mm×125 mm×100 mm, ii) flat and irregularly shaped sedentary stones from Alt Empordà in the north-eastern part of Catalonia (Spain), and iii) volcanic irregular shaped stones from Garrotxa in northern part of Catalonia (Spain). All the structures have been tested up to their collapse by using a tilting-table to induce out-of-plane actions. Repeatability tests have been conducted to better understand the effect of contact variability. The results of this study unveil that the heterogeneity of the dry joint contact, as well as the distribution of the blocks/units, affect the global response (both in terms of load capacity and failure mode). They also evidence that the most critical local failure mode is the joint opening. © 2024, University of Cantabria - Building Technology R&D Group. All rights reserved.