Evaluation of microwave drying effects on historical brickwork and modern building materials

One of the most common reasons for any construction work requirements is an increased humidity of the building. Increased humidity does not affect only buildings with basement, but also buildings without it, which were not properly hydro-isolated or the hydro isolation was damaged due to aging or to adverse environmental effects. Such situations are solved with designing suitable remediation measures, which necessarily includes drying of damp masonry as well. This almost always includes historical buildings, where protection against groundwater was never planned. Such buildings are usually very sensitive to any physical intervention into construction itself and destructive methods of revitalization are very often completely out of the question, therefore it is necessary to develop methods, which can be used particularly for historical buildings. This article focuses on evaluating effects of microwave drying historical brickwork as well as modern building materials. First, the method of microwave drying is described in general, then we cover the experiment, which was performed at the Faculty of Civil Engineering at Brno University of Technology. The experiment was applied on two pillars made of historical brickwork. Those samples were being thoroughly analysed during the drying process and final outcomes were compared to already existing experiments on modern materials. The goal of this work is to find out, if the method of microwave drying is more suitable for described conditions and also to set such process of drying, which would provide the highest effectivity.