Dynamic tensile behavior of Neapolitan Yellow Tuff

Nowadays structural assessment of critical infrastructures cannot be conducted without considering high dynamic loads, which could be due to natural causes, like strong earthquakes, or man-made causes, like blast or impacts. Historical buildings represent surely critical structures, widely present in our cities and the behavior of constituent materials under high dynamic loads is absolutely fundamental to investigate the vulnerability of such structures under extreme events. The main objective of the presented activities is then to study the effect of high dynamic loads on Neapolitan yellow tuff, a Mediterranean natural stone, which is present in hundreds of historical monuments in Naples and other European cities. A dynamic characterization was performed, through high strain-rate failure tensile tests. A wide range of strain-rates was investigated, from 10(-5) s(-1) to 50 s(-1). The results were processed to obtain stress-strain relationships at different strain-rate levels; moreover Dynamic Increase Factors (DIFs) - strain-rate curves for tensile failure stress were also evaluated.