A seismic assessment and protection proposal of a base isolation system for Michelangelo’s David

Michelangelo’s David is a masterpiece that belongs to the world community and needs to be preserved. Actually David stands in Accademia Gallery, Florence (Italy). This site is characterized by a medium seismicity. Therefore many studies have been produced throughout last decades to assess its static behaviour and to find a proper solution able to provide adequate seismic protection. In this regard, base isolation application to statues is a relatively new technique. Several devices have been already applied to important structures all over the world. This study focuses on the application of sliders between Michelangelo’s David and its basement. These devices consist of two sliding plates arranged in an array of movable top plates and fixed bottom plates. This paper mainly aims at reproducing the interaction statue – sliders – basement taking into consideration seismic protection devices currently named as sliders. Isolation system behaviour has been reproduced by employing a Bouc and Wen hysteretic model whose parameters have been calibrated by shaking table tests performed at the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research (PEER) Center, in California. The study aims at numerically reproducing the sliders with OpenSees, to simulate the high non linearities of the interface and reproduce the large displacements predicted by the analytical model.