Title: Damage assessment of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence by means of numerical modelling

Authors: Gianni Bartoli; Michele Betti; Giacomo Torelli

Addresses: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy ' Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Florence, via di S. Marta 3, I-50139 Florence, Italy ' School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering, University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK

Abstract: Within 2014, a research project promoted by the Opera del Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence allowed to make new evaluations about the conservation of the Baptistery of San Giovanni. The research project was developed by an interdisciplinary team composed of experts in conservation and restoration, architects, geologists, archaeologists and structural engineers. The geometry of the Baptistery was acquired through terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) techniques and a new refined finite element (FE) model, built on the basis of the newly defined geometry was built. The numerical model was first tuned according to the available experimental results (main frequencies and mode shapes) and subsequently employed to interpret the detected cracking pattern. While providing an interpretation of the manifested damage affecting the Baptistery (through the use of the FE technique, by performing linear parametric analyses) the paper offers an illustrative case study of damage assessment in the field of monumental heritage by means of quite simple numerical tools.

Keywords: baptistery; cracking pattern; damage assessment; FE model; masonry dome.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMRI.2017.085955

International Journal of Masonry Research and Innovation, 2017 Vol.2 No.2/3, pp.150 - 168

Received: 26 Apr 2016
Accepted: 11 Jan 2017
Published online: 18 Aug 2017 *

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