Masonry Architectures of Historical and Archaeological Interest. Advanced Mechanical Modelling and
Conservation Issues
Preservation and restoration of historical and monumental structures is a complex matter, which involves
a deep understanding in various fields such as: history, architecture, structural engineering. Moreover, the
great variety of ancient masonry requires case-by-case methodologies of analysis, which are to be tailored
to any case study by experienced researchers who can cover the aforementioned matters as a whole.
This presentation focuses its attention to the issues of mechanical modelling of masonry in order to investigate
the structural behaviour of monumental constructions. To this aim, the models currently used in literature
do not seem in general satisfactory and cannot be used regardless the particular constructional typology to
be analysed. With reference to monumental buildings, in particular, the need for using refined modelling
methodologies and a plurality of computational techniques seems unavoidable.
Within this context, the
study covers different levels of investigations, ranging from mechanical modelling at the scale of constituent
materials to overall structural analysis, and develops the analysis of some significant case studies.
The main aspects to investigate concern: the mechanical modelling of masonry structures focusing
on masonry materials and related constitutive aspects treated using non-standard approaches; static
and dynamic collapse analysis of structures with reference to seismic safety assessment; case studies on
relevant monumental structures and validation of the models, taking advantage of the computational and
conceptual tools developed.
