Overturning of the façade in single-nave churches under seismic loading

Abstract

The out-of-plane collapse of the façade represents one of the major threats and the most frequent cause of damages of churches due to strong earthquakes. Due to the slenderness of the façade and the lack of adequate connections to the side walls and the wooden roof, the seismic action can trigger the overturning. A detailed assessment is therefore required to judge whether or not to intervene. This paper presents an approach for the seismic assessment of the stability of the façade, through a discrete element model based on a photographic survey, with the aim of representing the actual geometry and arrangement of the stone units and their effects on the kinematics of the overturning. The collapse mechanism is simulated with both, quasi-static pushover and dynamic pulse-based analyses and the results compared to those of conventional rigid-body kinematics. The proposed approach is then applied to seven masonry churches that suffered severe damages during the 2009 L’Aquila (Italy) earthquake and the failure mode provided by the analyses is compared to the damages caused by the earthquake. The method is able to give a reliable estimate of the expected failure mechanism, taking into account the quality of the masonry and the connections to the side walls, while also providing the seismic acceleration required to trigger the motion and the ultimate displacement beyond which collapse occurs.

A solution for the frictional resistance in macro-block limit analysis of non-periodic masonry

“…The masonry patterns used the generator available in Grasshopper plugin for Rhinoceros [63]. Finally, three real case studies of churches located in central Italy have been simulated, and results are compared with those reported in de Felice et al [73].…”

“…In this section, the proposed analytical model is applied to three single-nave churches belonging to the area surrounding the city of L'Aquila [73]. The churches under investigation are named: Church of S. Maria del Presepe (C1), Church S. Maria degli Angeli (C2) and Church S. Maria ad Cryptas (C3).…”

“…Furthermore, Fig. 11b-d represents the real masonry patterns adopted for the simulation, which the authors [73] kindly provided to conduct the present research work. In the same sketches, the RMPWs adopted to evaluate M l and M Ol are shown in white shading.…”

FRIBAS database for better characterization of RC and URM buildings: Towards specific T-H relationships

“…For URM buildings, the analysis of expected seismic response, in particular the fundamental period, has historically been based on simpli ed methods (Block et al 2006;Snoj et al 2020), and is still a common approach (i.e. Portioli et al 2021;Calò et al, 2021;de Felice et al 2021). At the European scale, URM buildings represent a high share of the residential building stock (Crowley et al 2020).…”

Seismic Performance Evaluation of Historical Case Study of Armenian Architecture Tekor Church

“…So far, many studies have been carried out to assess the damage and vulnerability of historic masonry churches subjected to earthquake loads and definition of the future seismic loads and design of proper retrofitting solution (Casapulla, In a study, masonry churches with three naves were classified according to typological, structural and architectural features and the damages caused by the earthquake were analyzed visually (Matteis, Criber, & Brando, 2016). In a study, overturning of façade of single-nave churches was examined in under seismic loading (Felice, Fugger, & Gobbin, 2021). According to a research (Milani & Valente, 2015), seven masonry churches severely damaged in an earthquake sequence were analyzed by means of non-linear dynamic simulations.…”