Seismic Behaviour Analysis of Diaphragm Arches: Case Studies from Catalan Gothic Churches

Abstract

The Gothic style spread, starting from the 12th century, from the Ile-de-France to England and other countries of the Mediterranean area, such as Spain and Italy, according to different configurations and construction techniques, influenced by economic, environmental and social factors. The so-called Catalan Gothic style is not exclusive to the architecture of the Principality of Catalonia but extends to the territories of the Crown of Aragon and Southern France. Its most important characteristics, based on the unitary conception of space and horizontality, had the religious architecture as their major reference. Among other structural elements, the large use of diaphragm arches, built transversally to the longitudinal direction of the nave, has been identified as peculiar both in ecclesiastic and civil Catalan Gothic architecture, although this technique is widely diffused also in the rest of the Mediterranean Europe. The present study focuses on the behaviour of this construction system under horizontal loads. After some brief notes on the history, origins and evolution of diaphragm arches, preliminary outcomes obtained by means of seismic analyses are provided in this paper. In particular, the possible collapse mechanisms of such remarkable curved structures have been firstly investigated by implementing FEM Models derived from real Catalan examples. Therefore, seismic analyses by means of analytical models have been carried out on the detected cases in order to demonstrate the capacity of this kind of structural skeleton, the importance of geometric ratios and the influence that specific typical elements may have in modifying the seismic behaviour of the analysed structures.

Full document

References

[1] Vivian, P. The Beginnings of Gothic Architecture in Languedoc. The Art Bulletin. (1988). 70. 104. 10.2307/3051156.

[2] De Matteis, G. & Mazzolani, F.M. 2010. The Fossanova church: seismic vulnerability assessment by numerical and physical testing. International Journal of Architec-tural Heritage, 4: 222-245.

[3] Roca, P., Pellegrini, L., Oñate, E., Hanganu, A. Analysis of the structure of Gothic Cathedrals. Application to Barcelona Cathedral. In Structural Analysis of Historical Contruction II. Possibilities of Numerical and Experimental Techniques, Roca et al. (Eds.), CIMNE, Barcelona, (1998).

[4] Roca, P. Studies on the structure of Gothic Cathedrals. In Historical Constructions. P. B. Lourenço and P. Roca (Eds.), University of Guimaraes, Guimaraes, (2001).

[5] Zaragozá Catalán, A. (1990). Iglesias de arcos diafragma y armadura de madera en la arquitectura medieval valenciana. Valencia: Universidad Politécnica de Valencia.

[6] Roca, P., Cervera, M., Pelà, L., Clemente, R., Chiumenti, M. Continuum FE Models for the Analysis of Mallorca Cathedral. Engineering Structures, (2013) 46: 653-670, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.engstruct.2012.08.005.

[7] Pulido, V., Alonso-Durá, A., Fenollosa, E., Boquera, A. Análisis constructivo y estructural de la catedral de Valencia. Informes de la Construcción (2016) 68, 543, e158, 10.3989/ic.15.102.

[8] Cassinello, P. Influencia de los terremotos históricos en la construcción de las catedrales góticas españolas. Annali Di Architettura: Rivista del centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura “Andrea Palladio” (2005) 17: 9-20.

[9] Lavedan, P., L'Architecture gothique religieuse en Catalogne, Valence et Baléars. Laurens, Paris, 1935

[10] Durliat, M., L'art dans le Royaume de Majorque. Éd. Privat, Toulouse

[11] De Matteis, G., Cacace, D., Rouhi, J., Zizi, M. Seismic behaviour of Gothic transversal arcades: A preliminary parametric investigation. In Proceedings of SEMC2019, Advances in Engineering Materials, Structures and Systems: Innovations, Mechanics and Applications. (2019) Cape Town, South Africa. ISBN:978-1-138-38696-9.

[12] Heyman, J. The Stone Skeleton: Structural Engineering of Masonry Architecture. (1995) Cambridge University Press.

[13] Murcia-Delso, J., Das, A. K., Roca, P., Cervera, M. Seismic safety analysis of historical masonry structures using a damage constitutive model. In COMPDYN 2009 - ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Methods in Structural Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering. M. Papadrakakis, N.D. Lagaros, M. Fragiadakis (Eds.), Rhodes, Greece (2009).

[14] Irizarry, J., Podestà, S., Resemini, S. Curvas de capacidad para edificios monumentales: la iglesia Santa María del Mar de Barcelona. In proceedings of 2º Congreso Nacional de Ingeniería Sísmica. 1st-4th April, Malaga, Spain. (2003).

[15] Roca,P. Basílica de Santa Maria del Mar: estudi de l’estructura. Technical University of Catalonia (2007).

[16] Cacace, D., Rouhi, J., Zizi, M. and De Matteis, G. (2019). Vulnerabilità sismica di archi in muratura: uno studio parametrico con approccio cinematico. XVIII Convegno ANIDIS – L’Ingegneria sismica in Italia. Sep. 15-19. Ascoli Piceno, Italy.