Mohr-Coulomb failure domain of rural masonry through slightly-destructive tests

The experimental campaign presented in this paper consisted in performing slightly-destructive tests on rural masonry buildings damaged by the 2012 Emilia earthquake, in order to determine the mechanical parameters of masonry and its shear behavior. A particular focus is here devoted to the construction of a Mohr- Coulomb failure domain for the rural masonry investigated. To this purpose, the results obtained from shove tests and splitting tests on masonry cores with inclined mortar joints have been considered. The output of these tests, indeed, is the failure state of stress (σ;τ ) of the samples, to be reported in the Mohr-Coulomb diagram. The linear interpolation of the points determined, represents the failure domain searched. The results on eight buildings investigated are here analyzed, together with a discussion on the interpretation of the shove test, in order to evaluate the applicability of the proposed methodology.