Experimental analysis and numerical modeling of the seismic site response at Santa Maria di Collemaggio Basilica in L'Aquila

Abstract

The Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio is an important cultural heritage site, considered as an extraordinary example of Romanic Art in the Abruzzo Region (Italy). Erected in the second half of the XII century, it suffered numerous transformations partly due to the damages incurred as result of several earthquakes. During the April 6, 2009 L’Aquila earthquake (MW = 6.3), the Basilica was strongly dam-aged and in particular the area of the transept collapsed causing the fall of the dome. Recently the Eni Company launched the financing project “Ripartire da Collemaggio” for the restoration of this historical building. The project includes a deep geological, geotechnical and geophysical in-vestigations, still ongoing (AA.VV., 2013), that complete the infor-mation on L’Aquila subsoil already provided by numerous studies car-ried on in downtown L'Aquila (MS–AQ Working Group, 2010; Amo-roso et al., 2010; Cardarelli e Cercato, 2010; Amoroso et al., 2014; Monaco et al., 2013; Santucci de Magistris et al., 2013; Monaco et al., 2012; Milana et al., 2011). This paper illustrates the preliminary results of seismic response anal-yses carried out at Santa Maria di Collemaggio Basilica, by using EE-RA (Bardet et al., 2000), a monodimensional (1D) code, and QUAD4M (Hudson et al., 1994), a bi-dimensional (2D) software. Both programs are dedicated to model the seismic response of a site also tacking into account for non-linear soil behaviour.