Stone masonry buildings: Analysis of structural acoustic and energy performance within the seismic safety criteria

Natural stone masonry is a building technology largely used all over the world, since the dawn of humankind. At present day stone masonry buildings, beyond being naturally characterized by intrinsic building physics performances, allow to reconsider the use of natural stone masonry (together with new technological supports, components and materials), as a promising ‘‘new trend” for both newly developed buildings and renovation of existing buildings, in particular where it is a priority to retrieve the historical identity of the urban landscape. In this paper, energy performance and structural-acoustic properties of stone masonry buildings, in compliance with seismic safety criteria, are investigated and discussed on the basis of current technical standards and scientific literature. Related performances are evaluated by means of accurate calculation models. The results show that stone masonry buildings can offer often higher performance than those normally attributed to it. A graphic methodology has been implemented to define ten specimens with different configurations of stone and mortar joints, representative of different typological situations, expressed by the ratio between volume of mortar and stone: the method allows to override the calculation difficulties caused by the great variability of masonry typologies by the use of a computational FEM software. The results of calculation on these specimens have shown a strength relationship between this ratio and the U value and a good relationship with the periodic thermal transmittance, in accordance with the results of other researchers, and encourage deepening the research on a greater number of samples and constructive typologies.