Seismic assessment of masonry churches through combined modal and pushover analysis

The paper proposes a novel procedure for the seismic assessment of ancient masonry churches. The procedure stems from the idea that the study of the linear dynamic behaviour of the building as a whole can help to gather information on the portions of the building most vulnerable in the event of an earthquake. The proposed procedure consists of several steps, the first of which is the modal analysis of the entire structure, which becomes the tool through which to define a series of simplified non-linear static analyses, performed on the whole structure and able of capturing the collapse load associated with the mechanisms. The procedure is first validated through comparison with the results of an experimental campaign and, subsequently, adopted to study the seismic behaviour of the church of St. Martino dei Gualdesi (Castelsantangelo - Italy), significantly hit by the 2016–2017 Central-Italy earthquake, and the church of St. Nicolò di Capodimonte in Camogli (Genova - Italy), studied in a previous work by the Authors [1].