Submitted for publication in the International Journal of Architectural Heritage 1 Structural assessment of a XVII th century masonry vault with AE and numerical techniques A. Carpinteri, S. Invernizzi 1 & G. Lacidogna Politecnico di Torino, Department of Structural Engineering and Geotechnics. Torino, Italy ABSTRACT In the present paper, we describe the experimental and numerical assessment of a XVII th century masonry vault, which was required because of the change in use of the upper floor. During the in situ load test, we recorded the Acoustic Emissions (AE) from the vault, as well as displacements of the vault and strains in the steel rods. We compare the experimental data with the numerical results obtained from finite element modeling of cracking and crushing. After validation, the model allows us to assess the ultimate load bearing capacity of the vault. 1 INTRODUCTION The “Ospedale S.Giovanni” in Turin (Italy) is a masonry building complex initiated in 1680, under the design of the architect Amedeo di Castellamonte (Fig. 1a). The first floor of the building (realized around 1762) will soon host an important fossil collection of the Regional Museum of Natural Science. Due to this change of use, an assessment of the structural load capacity of the masonry vault beneath the first floor (Fig. 1b) is necessary, because the fossil collection will involve a sensible increase in the vault load. To this purpose, a detailed geometrical survey of the 30m long and 10 m span barrel vault has been carried out, in order to build a fully 2D finite element model of the vault, taking into account also the presence of steel rods placed to bear part of the horizontal thrust from the vault. The load bearing capacity of the vault has been assessed by means of an in situ loading test. The load has been applied using three water cushions, each one capable of exerting a pressure of 5500 Pa. During the loading and unloading phase, the vault deflections were recorded, as well as the increase in the steel rods tension. On the other hand, the initial stress in the steel rods had been determined from the first bending frequency during a dynamic test. The masonry vault was also instrumented in order to record the Acoustic Emission (AE) continuously during the loading-unloading procedure. This technique was firstly used in the case of masonry-vaulted structures by Hendry and Royles (1991), and has been more recently employed by 1 Corresponding author: Dr. Stefano Invernizzi, Department of Structural Engineering and Geotechnics, Politecnico di Torino, Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24, 10129 Torino – Italy. tel. +39.011.564.4860 fax +39.011.564.4899. e-mail: stefano.invernizzi@polito.it homepage: http://staff.polito.it/stefano.invernizzi/