Assessing the reliability of non-destructive and moderately invasive techniques for the evaluation of uniaxial compressive strength of stone masonry units

• UPV and Schmidt Hammer were used as NDTs for strength estimation of building stones.
• Reliability in the stone strength assessment by the use of microcores was studied.
• Regression analysis and analysis of variability of the results were performed.
• UPV gives the best results in detecting strength variation among blocks.
• Results evidence some limits in the use of Schmidt Hammer and test on microcores.

In this work Ultrasonic Pulse Velocity (UPV), Schmidt Hammer Rebound (SHR) test and strength assessment on microcores (UCSm) and standard cubic samples (UCSc) were used to detect the uniaxial compressive strength of stone masonry units. The analysis of the variability of the measurements allowed to investigate the significance of each test to differentiate the masonry blocks. The latter was evaluated by a Variability Index (VI), as the ratio between the variances at block scale and among the blocks. VI was found higher for UCSc and UPV than for UCSm and SHR measurements. A regression analysis aimed to the correlation of uniaxial compressive strengths evaluated by conventional destructive test on stone cubes with the other test results. The findings showed a good linear correlation among UCSc and UPV values (R2 = 0.83), thus supporting the reliability of UPV to screen the masonry units and to estimate their uniaxial compressive strength. The correlation of UCSc with UCSm was reasonable (R2 = 0.76), while it was low with SHR results; some limits related to the use of SHR and UCSm tests are also discussed.