Structural monitoring and assessment of an ancient masonry tower

The Asinelli Tower in Bologna is taken as a case study to define a general methodology for the analysis of historical masonry towers. The difficulties that are typically encountered in building finite element models of increasing complexity are addressed, proposing a general procedure. A formulation accounting for masonry anisotropy due to existing damage and cracking is presented, which is more effective in describing the dynamic behavior of the tower, compared with results available in the literature. In addition, acoustic emission monitoring results are presented and compared to the numerical simulations. The structural assessment of the tower is carried out with respect to different actions like seismicity, wind and urban traffic.