The renovation of Santa Maria di Collemaggio Basilica: the intervention on the nave’s columns

The earthquake of L’Aquila in 2009 caused the partial collapse of the S. Maria di Collemaggio Basilica. The XIII century nave’s columns showed serious cracking throughout their height. Therefore, a retrofitting intervention was planned with the purpose of protecting these valuable elements from future additional damages. The intervention designed involved the complete unloading and reloading of the columns. To avoid additional damages, it was necessary to verify that the procedure would not alter significantly the existing stress state and would not lead to the occurrence of tensile stresses greater than the materials’ tensile strength. Therefore, a 3D FE model of the colonnade and the supported wall has been realized and a construction stage non-linear analysis implemented. The geometry was modeled through the acquisition of the results of a laser scanner survey in order to reflect faithfully the Basilica’s irregularities (lack of verticality of the wall, eccentricities, different dimensions from one column to the other). Moreover, elastic-brittle constitutive laws were assigned to the model’s materials to reproduce the intrinsic non-linearity of the masonry. The analysis results in terms of stresses and displacements were attentively analyzed. Furthermore, a comparison between the numerical results and the values measured during the intervention has been executed. An acceptable deviation between the values was observed and, therefore, the reliability of the model was assured.