CHARACTERIZATION OF THE HISTORIC MASONRY BUILDINGS OF MEXICO

In recent years great advances have been made in analytical tools to adequately described the nonlinear behavior of stone masonry in historic buildings. Although the degree of approximation has been good, there is not enough information of the main characteristics of the constituent materials. This is due to the difficulty of extracting samples of the masonry walls because they have an historical value. There are other alternative methods to characterize materials such as non-destructive testing, but due to the high cost of these equipment, their use is limited. A testing prop-am has been performed at the Institute of Engineering of UNAM, pursuing the main objective of providing basic information of the characterize the most common masonry used of typical stone masonry temples of the 16-18th centuries construction in Mexico. With a field research were identified the most common types of stones, mortar and walls used in the construction of the masonry buildings. Due to the extracting a limited number of samples of a wall, it was possible to characterize the masonry walls of a church. However, given the variety of materials used in the masonry and the impossibility to extracting samples of each type of masonry, some masonry walls more representative of the region were reproduced in laboratory. This article presents the results of tests on smalls walls built with different types and sizes of stone. Shows the characterization of the constituent materials and masonry walls.