Mechanical properties of masonry stone samples extracted from Mexican Colonial churches

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During the Mexican Colonial period, masonry made of stone and lime mortar was the main building material used to build churches, convents, and government buildings. After the Axochiapan earthquake (September 19, 2017, Mw 7.1), many of these buildings were seriously damaged, and an important quantity of debris was generated. Due to the limited information on the mechanical properties of such materials, a recollection campaign was carried out with the main objective of obtaining masonry samples from the debris produced from the damaged churches. Nine damaged churches built during the Colonial period were selected, seven of which were located in the “Route of convents”, a World Heritage site, in Morelos, Mexico. The masonry samples are composed mainly of tezontle, a light igneous stone and lime mortar. Some cases contain stone-like “boleos” and lime-mortar combined with clay or topsoil. The samples collected were transported to the laboratory with the main objective of obtaining their compressive strength, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio through uniaxial compression tests. According to the results, the mechanical properties computed had a high coefficient of variation due to the heterogeneity of the masonry, which is a typical characteristic of this type of material. Despite this heterogeneity, the results are an important contribution to the state of the art, which will allow more reliable numerical models to make more precise structural evaluations.