Salt attack effects on the shear behavior of masonry: Preliminary results of an experimental campaign

In this paper, preliminary results of an experimental campaign carried out on masonry triplets subjected to weathering cycles in salt solution are presented. Weathering cycles are constituted of a wetting phase by capillary rise of a sodium chloride solution and a drying phase in oven. At the end of the last conditioning cycle, triplets are shear tested in order to quantitatively assess the effects of salts on their mechanical behaviour, in particular on the Mohr-Coulomb relationship. To this aim, three levels of pre-compression are applied during the shear tests. For comparison purposes, unconditioned triplets are also tested under the same loading conditions.