GIORGIO FRUNZIO, VINCENZO MALLARDO AND MICHELA MONACO
ABSTRACT
Although masonry has been widely used as building material for centuries, its behaviour is not still not completely understood. Mechanical models developed for homogeneous elastic continua cannot be suitable for such a particular material. To develop a simple mathematical model, a large number of physical paraeters is needed. Among them, the masonry shear strength plays an important role. More extensive information is necessary about the evaluation of shear strength. Besides, to allow a comparison between experimental data, laboratory tests need to be performed according to fixed standards. This paper is a discussion on the effectiveness of the diagonal test and on the opportunity of realizing simpler tests. Both results of diagonal test of diagonal tests reported in literature and performed by the authors are discussed.
G-21
