The Fossanova church: seismic vulnerability assessment by numerical and physical testing

This article focuses on the seismic behavior of the church of the Fossanova Abbey (Priverno, Italy), which represents a magnificent example of a pre-Gothic Cistercian style monument. Aiming at investigating the seismic vulnerability of such a structural typology, experimental and numeric analyses have been carried out within the large European FP6 project PROHITECH. First, detailed investigations were devoted to identify the main constructional parts and the mechanical features of the constituting materials. Then, both ambient vibration tests and numeric modal identification analyses by finite element method (FEM) were applied, allowing the detection of the main dynamic features of the church. Based on such results, a refined FEM model reproducing the dynamic behavior of the structural complex was developed. The numeric study, carried out with a limit analysis, allowed the identification of the most vulnerable parts of the church, providing also an estimation of its actual seismic vulnerability. Finally, a shaking-table test on a 1-to-5.5 reduced scale model has been carried out checking the dynamic response of the complex structure as well as the constancy of the previous numeric study.