Structural assessment of a wooden bell-tower

摘要

This paper deals with the mechanical assessment of timber frame historical buildings, using field measurements coupled with numerical methods. The first step of the study aims at identifying the weak points of the system, i.e. those that have a dominant influence on the system response: an in situ diagnostic coupled with an experimental design and a FE calculation provides qualitative information on the system behavior. At this stage, a limited number of weak points have been identified that should be reinforced. In order to obtain the actual state of the system, quantitative information on the relationship between the input variables (properties of weak points) and the response is required. Then, this quantitative information is injected into the FE model to get an update of the influent parameters. By doing this, an optimized reinforcement of the structure can be obtained. An illustration of the method is proposed throughout the paper. In this example, timber components have no influence on the system behaviour, which is mainly determined by the properties of connections.