1 Professor, DICAM Department, University of Bologna, Bologna, 40136, Italy, andrea.benedetti@unibo.it
2 Senior Engineer, TERRAE MUTATAE Ltd, Via del Pantano,Pianola, 67100, Italy, sandro.verlinghieri@tin.it
ABSTRACT
Micheletti Palace is one of the oldest building complexes in the Spanish castle area in L’Aquila. After the severe 2009 earthquake, the structure, composed of heterogeneous stone textured walls and timber floors, exhibited serious damage, with cracks, deformations, and local expulsion of the external stone leaf.
The main drawbacks of the building are connected to the typical geometry of the medieval buildings with a “stillicidio” wall pair cutting the building plan, and the presence of a great number of fireplace flues. Even the very bad mechanical properties of the typical L’Aquila mortar containing rounded sandy particles create an overall mechanical deficiency of the building.
The restoration design used non-destructive techniques in order to assess the status of the structure, and a number of hidden geometrical and mechanical features were clarified. Afterwards, a careful seismic analysis was performed on the original and restored configuration in order to assess the safety enhancement introduced by the new design.
The main interventions involved filling of the voids in the masonry material with injections and masonry reconstruction, including a framework of FRP and steel ties being placed down in order to guarantee the skeleton stiffness against geometry changes during the seismic motion.
KEYWORDS: stone masonry, historic building, seismic damage, retrofitting
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