The Centre, concerning structural analyses and planning, formulates procedure to develop:
• technical support in departmental, inter-departmental,national and European research projects,
• technical and scientific consultation for public and private enterprises at their request by providing qualified and inter-disciplinary skills,
• collaboration with Software Houses specialized in the automatic structural calculation,
• integration between structural calculation software and software for the management of the 3D data acquired by means of Laser Scanner.
The Centre deals with the conservation and the restoration field and guarantees methodological and technical support. It also promotes national and international workshops, research projects and national and international Master.
For what concern the structural analysis in particular the main goals of the Centre are:
• The modelling of Structural Mechanics problems and
their solutions with finite elements numerical technique
(FEM – Finite Element Method and BEM – Boundary
Element Method)
• The definition of the state of tension and deformation
of constructions with surveyed geometry;
• The definition of procedures of intervention, methodologies and techniques to be applied in the structural restoration field;
• The definition of direct interfaces of structural
calculation programmes with programmes of 3D
modelling used in computer graphics.
The FEM codes used are MARC and ADINA, with which it is possible to solve static and dynamic problems in 2D and 3D, in elastic, linear and non-linear field, and in elastic-plastic field. In particular, these codes, which allow for the implementation of constitutive laws regarding fragile materials such as brickwork, or special anisotropic materials such as wood, lend themselves to the analysis of the
mechanical behaviour of historic brick and wood constructions.
Analysis of seismic vulnerability of historic buildings in seismic risk areas are also carried out on the basis of survey data, evaluations related to the mechanical properties of materials and historic records related to building techniques used. For this the Centre provides consultancy regarding problems of improvement or adaptation and offers solutions which may be assessed with FEM numerical simulations.
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