Full Scale Clay Brick Un-Reinforced Masonry Vault: A Shaking Table Test

The last earthquakes that occurred in Italy have demonstrated the extreme vulnerability of monuments and historical constructions. In particular, the observations of the damage have occurred in masonry arches and barrel vaults the most critical elements in the seismic vulnerability of such structures. Consequently, the understanding of their seismic performance has become a crucial problem in the field of structural engineering. Their dynamic behaviour is generally evaluated according to simplified methods or, as an alternative, to complex finite element analyses. However, a deep knowledge of their dynamic behaviour is still lacking from an experimental point of view and, so far, little experimental research has been conducted. At this regard, shaking table tests have been performed to investigate the seismic behaviour of a full scale unreinforced masonry vault having the profile of a segmental arch with a span of 298 cm, a rise of 114 cm and 220 cm depth. The vault is made of solid facing clay brick and pozzolanic masonry mortar. This paper presents a comprehensive overview of the main results of the experimental tests. The tested structure exhibits a good seismic behaviour, showing very slight damage up to an horizontal acceleration of about 4.8 m/s2 measured at the keystone position.