VULNERABILITY OF ART WORKS TO BLAST HAZARD: THE FOUNTAIN OF NEPTUNE IN FLORENCE

Abstract Conservation and protection of art works is a primary goal of each community, since artifacts represent a fundamental cultural and economic asset. In most cases, art goods are exhibited in Museums, which are appointed for their protection. Some of them, however, are exhibited outdoor, since they are conceived and made to enrich the public areas. In these cases, the art goods result to be even more vulnerable, since they are subjected both to natural hazard (i.e. earthquakes and floods) and to vandalic attacks. Art works have an intrinsic vulnerability, due to their irregular shape, slenderness, fragility and to their oldness. This paper is focused on the dynamic response of statues to blast explosion; a valuable case-study, i.e. the Fountain of Neptune, located in “Piazza della Signoria”, in Florence. The Fountain of Neptune is a marble and bronze opus made by Bartolomeo Ammannati between 1560 and 1565. The main character of the Fountain, Neptune, is a marble statue 5.7 meters tall, with a weight equal to 11.5 ton. A preliminary laser scanner survey has been made to achieve the geometrical representation of the statue. The geometrical model has been arranged, in order to be used for structural analyses. A numerical analysis has been performed to find the dynamic response of the statue to the loading resulting from a blast explosion. Such response has been found by assuming the explosion of assigned amounts of TNT. Some different cases have been considered, and a limit loading condition has been found for the blast, as a function of its amount.