A. Anzani¹, E. Garavaglia² and L. Binda³

1. Assistant Professor, Dept of Structural Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy, EU, anzani@stru.polimi.it
2. Assistant Professor, Dept of Structural Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy, EU, garava@stru.polimi.it
3. Full Professor, Dept of Structural Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza L. da Vinci 32, 20133 Milano, Italy, EU, binda@stru.polimi.it

ABSTRACT

In some cases, the assessment of the safety of historic buildings may require the evaluation of their vulnerability toward the effects of persistent loading. The problem of achieving a reliable lifetime estimate of this kind of structures involves many uncertainties. Therefore a probabilistic approach seems to be needed.

The lifetime assessment of ancient structures is investigated here through a simple stochastic approach, modelling the results of laboratory creep tests on the masonry of ancient buildings.

KEYWORDS: historic masonry, long term behaviour, probabilistic approach, fragility curves

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