CRESPI, PIETRO1; FRANCHI, ALBERTO2; GREGORI, AMEDEO3; RONCA, PAOLA4

1) Assistant Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, pietro.crespi@polimi.it

2) Full Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, alberto.franchi@polimi.it

3) Assistant Professor, University of L’Aquila, Department of Civil, Constructional-Architectural and Environmental Engineering, amedeo.gregori@univaq.it

4) Full Professor, Politecnico di Milano, Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering, paola.ronca@polimi.it

The paper illustrates the technical features of an experimental apparatus which aims to perform the in situ classical diagonal compression test by controlling, independently, the two forces applied on the two sides of the test specimen wallet. The apparatus is made of two steel loading shoes, two oil jacks placed on one of the two loading shoes at the two sides of the wall. The loading shoes can rotate if the wall does not act as a uniform, along the thickness, resistant structure. The two oil jacks are independently displacement controlled and therefore they can follow also the unstable brunch of each individual jack for the evaluation of ductility characteristic. An experimental investigation on an historic building in L’Aquila (Palazzo Paone), damaged by the 2009 earthquake and consolidated during 2012, is presented.

Keywords: masonry, diagonal compression test, masonry layers, displacement control