Author
A ANZANI, E GARAVAGLIA and L BINDA
Department of Structural Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy

Abstract
Among the factors which are peculiar to ancient masonry structures, creep and the creep-fatigue interaction have been shown to influence strongly their mechanical behaviour and continuous damage appearing to be caused by long-term heavy loads.
The problem of achieving a reliable lifetime estimate of historic masonry due to the effects of persistent loading has been dealt with by a probabilistic approach.
The results of pseudo-creep tests carried out on ancient masonry of different ages is presented and their interpretation by means of a probabilistic model proposed. This is aimed at the individuation of an aleatory variable as a significant index of vulnerability, and to the solution of the classic problem of reliability in stochastic conditions.