Structural Analysis of Historic Construction – D’Ayala & Fodde (eds) © 2008Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-0-415-46872-5 Structural performance of riveted connections in historical metal structures Mario D’Aniello & Luigi Fiorino University of Naples “Federico II”, Department of Structural Engineering, Naples, Italy Raffaele Landolfo University of Naples “Federico II”, Department of Construction and Mathematical Methods in Architecture, Naples, Italy ABSTRACT: Nowadays, in Italy historical metal structures represent a significant and important part of national architectural heritage. In fact, their intrinsic architectural and technological value represents a milestone in the history of constructions, being an attestation of great advance of technology and innovations reached more than two centuries ago. These structures usually show a spread damaging mainly due to the corrosion and the structural inadequacy. In particular, among the structural deficiencies the insufficiency of riveted connections can be easily recognized. Hence, in order to characterize the mechanical behaviour of riveted connections, an experimental and numerical research campaign has been planned. In this activity, riveted joint specimens have been designed to be representative of the connections of the Italian existing structures, such as roofing structure and steel railways bridges. This paper briefly summarizes the whole research activity and underlines the crucial themes to be deeply investigated. 1 INTRODUCTION Metal structures represented since the beginnings of the XIX century a great advance of the architecture and one of the most important innovations in the his- tory of constructions. However, among the variegated constructive scenario, two main structural typologies can be distinguished: the large span roofing structures and the structures for bridges, mostly for railway use. In particular, the latter cover a crucial role because of their strategic role and their relevant economical implications. After several decades from their erection, this class of constructions reveals some damages and/or struc- tural inadequacies (Guerrieri et al. 2005). In fact, the ancient metal structures, generally made of puddled iron or wrought steel riveted plates, were built on the basis of the experience on timber constructions, conse- quently without an adequate knowledge and maturity about typical aspects of design of steel structures, such as local buckling phenomena and concept of connection details. In particular, the ancient metal con- structions present riveted connections, usually charac- terized by inadequate capacity and improper geometry. Moreover, these types of constructions are generally characterized by trussed structural schemes. Hence, the failure of connections can produce the overall failure of the structure, because the riveted connections represent the weaker elements of these structures. These considerations lead to identify the vulnera- bility of connections as the crucial aspect concerning the structural capacity of ancient metal structures. In this direction, the research effort presented in this paper is devoted to investigate the structural capac- ity of the above-mentioned connections, in order to provide a tool for structural safety assessment of the historical structures built at the end of the 19th cen- tury or the beginning of the 20th century that are still in service. To achieve this purpose, a large number of riveted specimens, representative of local details of ancient connections, have been manufactured to be tested under shear loading (lap shear tests). The riveted joint specimens have been designed to be rep- resentative of the connections of the above mentioned structural typologies. Two existing historical structures have been chosen as benchmark to define the geometry of the riv- eted specimens. Therefore, among the ancient roofing structures, the Gallery Umberto I in Naples (Figure 1a) has been assumed as study case. While the railway bridge on “Gesso” river (Figure 1b), in Southern Italy, has been chosen as representative of the second struc- tural type. In detail, the experimental campaign can be subdivided into two main branches: 1.Tests on the 431