Figure - available from: Environmental Earth Sciences
This content is subject to copyright. Terms and conditions apply.
Former porous limestone quarries that are now used as housing or cellars

Former porous limestone quarries that are now used as housing or cellars

Source publication
Article
Full-text available
There are historic subsurface dimension stones in the capital of Hungary (Budapest) that were excavated in porous limestone. The stability of these subsurface openings is important, since most of them are located in urban areas, where existing buildings or new structures are planned to be built. The paper presents a detailed study considering the g...

Citations

... Engineering geological research is essential in preserving subsurface openings, such as caves, cellars or even tombs. Previous studies focused on the material testing and stability calculations of such systems, and examples are known from Spain [1], form Italy [2], Hungary [3][4][5], and Korea [6]. Focusing on the study area of Egypt, the stability of selected tombs was also analyzed [7][8][9][10]. ...
Article
Full-text available
The current study describes the engineering geological properties of a rock-cut tomb that is located near Luxor, forming a part of the Theban necropolis in Egypt. The studied Theban Tomb no. 25 (TT 25) was excavated during the New Kingdom and served as a funeral site. The host limestone belongs to the Late Paleocene Tarawan Chalk Formation. The site investigations included the detection of the joint system, the measurements of relative humidity and temperature cycles, and moisture content. The rock mass parameters were also outlined considering the strength (obtained from Schmidt hammer rebounds) and the orientation and frequency of joints. Five joint sets were identified: three sub-vertical and one bedding-controlled sub-horizontal. The results of temperature, relative humidity, and moisture content measurements support the observations, namely that salts accumulate at the sloping passage and burial chamber, where higher humidity provokes salt efflorescence.
... Porous limestone was quarried in subsurface areas for dimension stone from the nineteenth century in the Budapest region. Zenah et al. (2022) assessed the stability of a cellar system under surface by computing the critical depth and Fig. 1 Rolf Snethlage (right) with Siegfried Siegesmund at the official book presentation of the textbook "Naturstein in der Kulturlandschaft" (2013) at the German Federal Environmental Foundation in Osnabrück critical width of pillars under critical load for this type of limestone. The strength reduction factor was calculated for several geometries, indicating the changes in the stability of these underground quarries and pointing out the importance of cellar geometries. ...
Article
Full-text available
Under the umbrella of "building stones", a wide range of research topics are possible. A vast interdisciplinary scientific community provides valuable information that should be considered at several levels. These are the extraction of the stone from the quarry to their application on buildings, and the implementation of conservation measures when necessary. The present special issue contains 44 articles on the research into natural building stones. The editorial intention is to present the main highlights of each paper, which are grouped into the following sections in order to better understand the overall content: Quarrying, Physical-Mechanical Properties, Heritage and Weathering, Restoration and Techniques, Miscellaneous. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Professor Rolf Snethlage. The international community of applied geosciences has lost an important researcher and teacher. Therefore, a brief description of importance of the research carried out by Rolf Snethlage is presented at the end of the Editorial.