Numerical Modelling and Structural Health Monitoring for Built Heritage Management: The Case of the Church of Santa Croce in Ravenna

The conservation of the built heritage represents nowadays a great challenge for the scientific community and for the heritage managers since historical buildings can typically face both seismic and climate related hazards. To increase the resilience and reduce the vulnerability of historical constructions, specific strategies and methodologies should be developed and applied. In the framework of the Shelter project, funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 program, the Church of Santa Croce in Ravenna (Italy) was taken as a case study for the validation of such methodologies, involving a multidisciplinary approach. In this work, the structural behavior of the Church of Santa Croce was investigated through the development of a finite element model and the implementation of a Structural Health Monitoring system, with the possibility of accessing data in real-time. First, the historical analysis of the construction and slightlydestructive tests were carried out to investigate the constructive details, the state of damage, and the mechanical properties of the materials. After acquiring a detailed knowledge level of the construction, modal analyses and nonlinear static numerical simulations were carried out to assess the modal parameters and to reproduce the existing crack pattern. On the one hand, the numerical analyses supported the design of the monitoring system itself; on the other hand, a model updating was carried out to calibrate mechanical parameters not explicitly obtained through testing. The adopted methodologies and approaches are described in the paper, together with the results of the numerical simulations and preliminary results acquired from the monitoring system.