Quality assessment of reinforced masonry walls by means of non destructive tests

In the framework of the DISWall research project, funded by the European Commission, various innovative construction systems for load and non-load-bearing reinforced masonry walls have been developed and have been subjected to extensive laboratory testing and analytical studies. One of the project aims was to calibrate existing methods for non-destructive testing on modern reinforced masonry buildings. Thus, two specimens featuring known defects affecting reinforcements were built making use of perforated clay units. Subsequently radar, sonic and ultrasonic techniques were employed to investigate the specimens, with the intention of detecting reinforcements and defects. The proposed Non-Destructive Techniques (NDT) were applied at different stages of the construction, in order to evaluate their effectiveness in solving the identified testing problems. Several difficulties were encountered due to non sufficient sampling rate as well as to the presence of holes, concerning respectively sonic and ultrasonic measurements. However, some interesting results were obtained, in particular by means of radar tests, and are discussed in the present contribution.