Survey and preliminary assessment of a baroque vault for refurbishment planning

Abstract

Designing the modification of buildings for a new use is a costly and time-consuming process, before which it is often necessary to conduct a preliminary assessment of the feasibility of the intended project. The article discusses the procedure for such a preliminary cost-effective assessment using the example of a historic building with vaulted ceilings. For older historical buildings, archival documents specifying their geometry, construction details and material characteristics are typically not available. For the preliminary design, it is possible to obtain information about the dimensions of the load-bearing elements non-destructively. However, the knowledge of the exact material properties of the masonry exceeds the possibilities of an inexpensive assessment, which must take advantage of the data available in the literature for similar structures. This article presents a methodology and an example of the measurement and assessment of the mechanical response of the Baroque vault to static loading. It shows the process of obtaining data on the geometric shape of the structure by means of geodetic surveying and geometric radar measurements of the thickness of vaults whose upper faces are not accessible. Two models are used to calculate the internal forces in the structure. The first planar model considers a simplified barrel vault strip according to the focused geometry with respect to geometric nonlinearity and without tension, the second model is a linear spatial model of the entire vault. The calculation was performed in ANSYS 17.2, the input parameters of the material are taken from the literature. The calculated stresses in the vault are compared with the values of the design strength of brick masonry, taking into account the characteristic compressive strength of the masonry based on published known data obtained during tests of similar historical materials. The results are then used to decide on the feasibility of the intention to adapt the building for a new use.