Innovative Experimental Techniques in the Service of Restoration of Stone Monuments - Part I: the Experimental Set up

The mechanical response of marble epistyles interconnected to each other by means of metallic connectors when subjected to shear loading is studied experimentally. The study is motivated by the need of the scientific group of the Athenian Acropolis to substitute damaged ancient connections by new ones. In this direction “I”-shaped titanium connectors are placed in the grooves sculptured by ancient stonemasons in the marble blocks and the empty space is then filled by a suitable cement-based material. Guided by the experience gathered from the inspection of failed connections, which clearly indicates that failure starts at the interior of the “titanium-mortar-marble” complex, along the material interfaces, an experimental protocol was improvised, aiming at pumping data from the interior of the interconnected epistyles. For this to be accomplished innovative sensing techniques like pressure stimulated currents, digital image correlation and acoustic emission were used in conjunction with traditional ones. In the first part of this short two-paper series the experimental set-up, the materials and the specimens’ geometry are described.