RESEARCH ARTICLE
Construction and Retrofit Methods of Stone Masonry Structures in Cyprus
Petros Christou1, *, Miltiades Elliotis2
Article Information
Identifiers and Pagination:
Year: 2016Volume: 10
Issue: Suppl 2: M6
First Page: 246
Last Page: 258
Publisher ID: TOBCTJ-10-246
DOI: 10.2174/1874836801610010246
Article History:
Received Date: 15/1/2015Revision Received Date: 15/5/2015
Acceptance Date: 9/7/2015
Electronic publication date: 31/05/2016
Collection year: 2016
open-access license: This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 4.0 International Public License (CC BY-NC 4.0) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/legalcode), which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
Abstract
Natural stone is a durable construction material which has been used through centuries for various types of structures. These structures are exposed to corrosive and degradation factors such as climate change and pollution, natural ageing, earthquake actions, increasing urbanization and even human negligence, potentially exposing them to irreversible structural damage and loss. Considering the large number of traditional structures and the historic value of a great number of stone masonry structures, the necessity of maintenance, repair, retrofit and restoration of stone masonry structures is imposed. The process which leads to the preservation of such structures consists of three stages: 1) the in-situ and laboratory study of the degree of damage and of the factors which cause the natural damages on the materials of these buildings, 2) the detailed drawing of the layout and the elevations. This stage also includes the selection of the appropriate measures for the maintenance and retrofits according to the special characteristics of the structure and the design of the intervention method, and 3) the execution of all the intervention works. This paper presents a description of various types of natural stones found in Cyprus, the most commonly used construction methods as well as methods for the retrofit of stone masonry structures.
