Mechanical characterization of “Scaglia Rossa” stone masonry through experimental and numerical analyses

This paper outlines the complete characterization of masonry walls composed of “Scaglia Rossa”, a typical stone of the Apennine area between the Umbria and Marche Regions in Central Italy. The study focuses the assessment of the mechanical behavior by means of an experimental campaign carried out in the laboratory of the Polytechnic University of Marche, where the samples of “Scaglia Rossa” masonry, obtained from the controlled demolition of three school buildings, were reconstructed with the same techniques of the 1950s-‘60s, and then tested in order to identify both the constituent materials, stone and mortar, and the composite masonry. The experimental tests were prior to a numerical analysis implemented by the adoption of a nonlinear model capturing the cracking behavior. The main mechanical parameters were then calibrated by means of an optimization algorithm of Levenberg-Marquardt, considering a continuous approach with both (i) macro- and (ii) micro-modelling techniques and obtaining resistance parameters not deriving directly from the experimental tests. The comparison between the results obtained from the Levenberg - Marquardt algorithm by changing the parameters of the damage model based on data given by the experimental campaign allowed to confirm the validity of the approach used.