Continuous Assessment of Historic Structures - A State of the Art of applied Research and Practice in Belgium

1. Abstract With approximately 10 000 listed and protected monuments, the Belgian Building Heritage is exceptionally rich. The preservation of this unique patrimony requires fundamental effort. The Koning Boudewijn Stichting (Rosiers et al., 1998) estimated the total cost necessary to maintain or improve the building heritage to such an extent that it would only require regular maintenance for a reference period of 50 years, to be 2.25 billion EURO. This paper gives an overview of the state of the art in (applied) research and practice. Besides a global overview, more detailed information concerns the research activities developed at the KULeuven with respect to the preservation of historic structures. The topics treated are situated all over in the process of conservation: monitoring, design and analysis models, assessment tools and consolidation and strengthening methods. As a large number of monuments and buildings are made out of brick/stone masonry it is not surprising that a lot of research effort goes to the masonry material behaviour. Seen the use of wood as a building material for historic structures, strengthening of wooden structures is also addressed in this paper. Sometimes even a reinforced concrete structure is considered an historic building. Due to the decay seen, several techniques for strengthening and repair have been developed. These will be presented shortly too.

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