Keywords: bòvedas tabicadas, experimental analysis, computational problem, rehabilitation, conservation.

The paper concerns the study of the so-called "bòvedas tabicadas" based on the results obtained by specific experimental investigations effected on the material of which they are constituted as well as on a vault that is still working. These structures, Catalan vaults, universally known as "bòvedas tabicadas", have their most amazing characteristic in the relationship between their resistance and their small thickness. They can be described by curvilinear elements constituted by a succession of "rasillas" layers lied down flat and bulwarks along the first layer with chalk pasta, and with mortar of cement and lime in the following layers.

This interesting constructive technique [1] has been improved in Cataluña, inspired by the works of Raphael Guastavino, Antony Gaudí and Luis Moya Blanco, among others [2] and eventually was spread all over the world.

In the course of time the constructive techniques have become more and more evolved and industrialized and new materials, characterized by even better mechanical properties as well as durability, have substituted methodologies and techniques that seem by now outmoded. Consequently, during this last century the technique of the "bòveda tabicada" has been slowly disappeared; on the contrary, taking into account the presence of the relevant actual artistic historical patrimony, the scientific and practical interest is today revaluated and renewed.

Therefore, aim of the present research is the implementation of a first analysis of the structure in its present configuration (often unusable), with the purpose of evaluating the real structure serviceability related to the prescribed intensity of the acting loads, and moreover the execution of a new second analysis of the same structure but suitably reinforced by placing further layers of "rasillas" constituted using the same material.

The problem is firstly approached by experimentally analysing just the mechanical behaviour of the constitutive structural material. Furthermore, some experimental tests have been performed on a real vault and the field of displacements under the action of known loads has been measured. With such information the physical model of the material has been characterized: it has been modelled as an ideal (equivalent) homogeneous and isotropic one, reproducing and interpreting the experimental tests through a numerical analysis adopting a finite element discretization. Therefore, such a model has been used for the following analysis of the reinforced structure.

1

Bergós Massó J., "Materiales y elementos de costrucion", in Fantone C.R., "Il mondo organico di Gaudí architetto costruttore", Edizione Alinea, 1999.

2

Guastavino Moreno R., "Cohesive construction: its past, its present and its future", The American Architect and Building News, 41, 922, pp 125-129, 1893.

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