Preliminary Assessment Of The Seismic Behaviour Of Giotto’s Bell Tower In Florence

ABSTRACT

The assessment of the static and dynamic behaviour of historic masonry towers, together with the development of proper preservation strategies, has attracted in recent decades the interest of a plethora of scholars. Most of the studies focus on the assessment of their seismic behaviour since their slenderness exposes them to the dynamic effects induced by medium-to-severe earthquakes. This paper, which is framed in this background, discusses on a preliminary identification of the seismic behaviour of Giotto’s bell tower in Florence, one of the iconic masonry towers ever built in Italy. In the first part of this paper, a summary of the available information on this bell tower is provided. Next, a refined numerical model, built through the finite element technique, and based on a recent laser scanning survey, is reported and employed to investigate its seismic behaviour. The numerical model accounts (in a simplified way) for the soil-structure-interaction, and scaled natural accelerograms selected based on the Florence seismic hazard are considered to develop linear and nonlinear time-history analyses. The results allow an initial assessment of the seismic behaviour of Giotto’s bell tower suggesting both future in-depth investigations and analyses, together with proper preservation strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Finite Element (FE) model
• heritage structure
• masonry bell tower
• modal updating
• nonlinear time-history analysis
• seismic behaviour
• Soil-Structure-Interaction (SSI)

Acknowledgments

This research was financially supported by the “Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore” (which promoted a campaign of studies about Giotto’s bell tower in 2017-2018), which is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).