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Anania L., Badalà A. (2020), Mechanical properties and durability of ancient mortars in the historic buildings of Eastern Sicily, Mechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures, DOI: 10.1080/15376494.2020.1770383 AbstractEastern Sicily’s historic buildings are characterized by an almost  uniform use of local and naturally available calcareous and lavic stone  as aggregate. Also, ancient mortars comprise of lime or cement-lime  binder. Very limited studies concerning the mechanical properties of the  ancient mortars have been accomplished. In this paper, mortar samples  collected from the surviving heritage masonry structures in eastern  Sicily were selected to assess their composition. Due to limitations of  dimensions, shape and cohesiveness of mortar samples collected from  historic buildings, not laboratory test can be applied on the samples.  Then, new mortar samples were constructed matching those of historic  buildings in order to determine their mechanical properties. Hence, the  restored ancient mortar, were tested after 30-60-90 days of curing and  finally after 20 years of curing. The data obtained was, then compared  each other. To this aim, two series of mortar were performed for a total  of 400 samples. The composition of the mortars differs in according to  ancient recipes determined in the laboratory by means of the chemical  attack of the samples directly taken from historic buildings. The time  effects as well as the aggregate (sand) influence were analyzed. To this  aim bending, compression and tensile tests were carried out on all the  specimens. The data obtained show after 20 years a reduction between 10  and 15% of the compressive strength in mortar studied. All of these data  could be very useful for creating compatible mortar recipes for  restoration works as well as to define mechanical features of ancient  mortar in modeling process. 