Damage assessment of the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Florence by means of numerical modelling

Within 2014, a research project promoted by the Opera del Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence allowed to make new evaluations about the conservation of the Baptistery of San Giovanni. The research project was developed by an interdisciplinary team composed of experts in conservation and restoration, architects, geologists, archaeologists and structural engineers. The geometry of the Baptistery was acquired through terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) techniques and a new refined finite element (FE) model, built on the basis of the newly defined geometry was built. The numerical model was first tuned according to the available experimental results (main frequencies and mode shapes) and subsequently employed to interpret the detected cracking pattern. While providing an interpretation of the manifested damage affecting the Baptistery (through the use of the FE technique, by performing linear parametric analyses) the paper offers an illustrative case study of damage assessment in the field of monumental heritage by means of quite simple numerical tools.