Dr. Amin Jamshidi,
Volume 19, Issue 2 (10-2025)
Stones are widely used for building facades, flooring, paving, stairs, kerbs and load-bearing components. Weathering processes can have adverse effects on stones in terms of their aesthetic and technical properties. Changes in these properties will lead to the stone deterioration, resulting in financial damage to the building from both architectural and structural perspectives. Understanding the mechanisms by which weathering processes cause stone deterioration can be as a useful and efficient tool for assessing the long-term durability behavior of stone during its service life in a building. This study systematically investigated the mechanisms of the freezing-thawing and salt crystallization processes in the building stones deterioration. To this end, published papers on the deterioration of building stones, including igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic, due to freezing-thawing and salt crystallization processes were collected. Discussions performed on the mechanisms of freezing-thawing and salt crystallization reported in these papers from various perspectives were compared. The findings indicate that in each of these processes, more than one mechanism involved in the deterioration of building stone. In addition, results showed that depending on factors related to the surrounding environment of the stone and on the other hand, the inherent properties of the stone, various mechanisms will have different adverse effects in the deterioration of building stone.
