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Stone buildings—pillars, lighthouses, walls, arches, bridges, buttresses, roof vaults, castles, cathedrals and lettering
Published in John A. Hudson†, John W. Cosgrove, Understanding Building Stones and Stone Buildings, 2019
John A. Hudson†, John W. Cosgrove
There is an additional important point about the stability of stone walls at their right-angled corners: some form of strengthening is required to maintain their structural integrity, i.e., use of quoins. This word, pronounced like ‘coin’, is an old French word meaning ‘corner’. The quoins are used to join two walls meeting at a right angle and hence enhance the building’s strength, but they have also become a decorative aspect of a building’s architecture, providing both a visual frame and additional interest, Figure 5.28, so much so that they are often included in modern buildings as architectural visual extras even when they are unnecessary.
Seismic-resistant building practices resulting from Local Seismic Culture
Published in Mariana R. Correia, Paulo B. Lourenço, Humberto Varum, Seismic Retrofitting: Learning from Vernacular Architecture, 2015
J. Ortega, G. Vasconcelos, M.R. Correia
Traditionally, quoins were used to improve the connections between walls at the corners. The best quality, large and squared stone blocks were used at the corners to improve the adequate connection of the façades of the building, and to prevent their overturn, by creating efficient overlapping of the ashlars with the rest of the wall. They are a very common element in the stone masonry vernacular architecture in the Mediterranean countries.
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Published in Les Goring, Residential Surveying Matters and Building Terminology, 2023
Ashlar quoins: Figure 6: The corners (quoins) of a building formed with alternating header/stretcher ashlar blocks, as a decorative relief to the otherwise plain-rendered or brick-walls. Such quoins may be formed with sand-and-cement render, quarried stone, or precast artificial stone, terracotta, etc.
Empirical Performance Levels of Strengthened Masonry Buildings Struck by the 2016 Central Italy Earthquake: Proposal of a New Taxonomy
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2023
Luca Sbrogiò, Ylenia Saretta, Maria Rosa Valluzzi
The behaviour of MMBs is the most variable, ranging from thoroughly unsatisfactory to moderately good. Rubble masonry walls with faulty intraspecific interventions (of any type) (M1, M4) suffered of high damage, as these interventions created sudden peaks in stiffness distribution, which eased the crumbling of the original parts (Figure 2) (see also Saretta, Sbrogiò, and Valluzzi 2021a). Intraspecific interventions on diaphragms, which yielded the typical rubble masonry building with replaced semi-rigid or rigid slabs, did not inhibit crumbling and out-of-plane mechanisms, or even worsened them (see section 2.3.1, Figure 5). The seismic performance of these buildings seemed also to decay as macroseismic intensity increased (see Figure 8): the shear cracks that appeared in the walls at low degrees soon grew into crumbling and collapses (Figure 15). Improving interventions on rubble masonry (M1R, M4R) might be or might not be completed by interventions on diaphragms, respectively, S and R (interspecific) or F (intraspecific) types. In both cases, simple repointing helped walls to keep their integrity and increase stiffness (but not strength). Damage appeared as cracks in mortar joints and at the interface between walls and diaphragms (sliding-shear) (Figure 16(a,b)), sometimes evolving into local crumbling due to local imperfections. Repointed brick masonry (M2R) was found just in Amandola and its behaviour was more than satisfactory with just hairline cracks in mortar joints, especially in local discontinuities, like window frames or quoins (Figure 14(b,c)).
New Insights on the Borbone Construction System: a Peculiar 18th Century Retrofitting Solution for Earthquake Damaged Churches
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2022
The last article considers the strengthening of the vertical bearing structure, recommending for buildings whose collapse affected only the first level, the increase of the masonry resistant section of the ground floor on which to erect, “… conforming to the method of the General Instructions that is, by placing beams in the quoins and in the intersection of walls, and in other suitable sites, fitting them well into the masonry, and linking them with other beams across … “.13“ … uniformandosi al metodo dell’Istruzioni generali cioè piantando dé travi si negli angoli esterni che, nelle croci dé muri, ed in altri siti opportuni, incastrandoli bene nella fabrica, e concatenandoli con altri travi a traverso … ”.
Appropriate Strengthening Technologies for the Mitigation of Seismic Vulnerability of Bhutanese Vernacular Stone Masonry Architecture
Published in International Journal of Architectural Heritage, 2023
Roberto Pennacchio, Francesca De Filippi, Takayoshi Aoki, Phuntsho Wangmo
The observed lack of header stones and anchoring techniques at wall intersections in Bhutanese vernacular architecture (RGoB 2009) frequently caused vertical slits along the junctions, especially at the corners, and out-of-plane overturning of individual walls, particularly when orthogonal to the ground shaking direction (MoWHS and RGoB 2014). Simulations demonstrated that shaped quoins at wall intersections could make the junctions two times more efficient, with respect to an unbraced stone masonry, particularly at the corners (Ortega et al. 2018a). Bothara and Brzev (2011) also suggest using horizontal stitches, made of wire mesh or fibres fabric, to be applied through the stone lifts to strengthen the walls’ junction, at least each 600 mm.