Interventi di sistemazione e stabilizzazione della Rupe di San Leo

The town of San Leo and his renaissance castle rise at the top of a calcarenite - sandstone butte, overlying a clay - shale substratum. Over the centuries, the walls of the cliff have been repeatedly involved in instabiliy phenomena affecting, in particular, the wall of the castle and destroying the roads leading up to the town. Numerical analyses (DEM and FEM) had been performed with the aim of evaluating the stability condition of the rock face under the castle. The analyses suggested that the severe state of stress, which characterizes the toe of the butte, is greatly influenced by the interaction between the rigid rock mass and the underlying deformable subtratum. The DEM results, in agreement with field observations, also suggest that the margin of the rock slab is affected by a progressive opening of the rock joints striking parallel to the rock face, which are subjected to tensile and shear stresses.