Assessment of masonry strength in a heritage building

Heritage buildings in the Czech Republic are made of different types of masonry. Decisions concerning upgrades of these buildings should be preferably based on a reliability assessment, taking into account actual material properties. Due to inherent variability of historical masonry, information on its actual mechanical properties has to be obtained from tests. Estimation of masonry strength from measurements may then be one of the key issues in the assessment of historical structures. In the submitted study, the standard technique provided in the Eurocode EN 1996-1-1 is applied in the assessment of a masonry structure built in the 19(th) century. Characteristic and design values of the masonry strength, derived using principles of the Eurocode, are compared with corresponding fractiles of a developed probabilistic model. It appears that the characteristic value based on the probabilistic model is lower than that obtained by the standard technique. To the contrary, the partial factor for masonry recommended in EN 1996-1-1 seems to be rather conservative.