Ricerc@Sapienza

Assets of the architectural heritage buildings are a unique fortune of the entire world belonging to everyone regardless of ethnicity and as such shall be safeguarded and preserved. This very complex topic is a part of a multidisciplinary field of activities to be undertaken by experts of architecture, engineering, history and so on. Absence of data on these assets and the large variety of typologies such as materials, constructive typologies, techniques and more, requires the inclusion of many intrusive measures on such intricate structures. Adding to it the vulnerability to natural hazards, particularly seismic activity as the most adverse, such structures under very low stresses are known to be susceptible to intensive damage or collapse. Hence the study of these assets is still an open challenge to the scientific community that holds essential the development of proper methodologies of assessment, including constitutive models of strongly nonlinear structural responses at low levels of loading. In addition, the great variety of typologies of ancient structures requires an individuated methodology of analysis, which are to be custom fitted by experienced researchers who can handle the matter in an interdisciplinary manner. Consequently, the number of unknowns is larger and confined to each asset with no possible way of generalization and the constraint of the low intrusiveness perplexes the problem. The closest and the most optimized approach, respecting non-intrusiveness and low number of input, to tackling such a problem is the limit analysis application considering no-tension and frictional joints approach.
This research focuses on the mechanical modelling using discrete approaches, the numerical implementation utilizing constitutive models and validation of the results via a tilting table that can simulate the earthquake action in a static manner. The results of the research are then further applied to selected studies with reference to seismic safety.