COSTA, AGUSTÍ1; LLUIS I GINOVART, JOSEP 2; FORTUNY, GERARD3; COLL, SERGIO4

1) PhD candidate, Escola Tècnica superior d’Arquitectura de Reus, Universitat rovira i Virgili, agusti.costa@urv.cat

2) PhD, Escola Tècnica superior d’Arquitectura de Reus, Universitat rovira i Virgili, josep.lluisg@urv.cat

3) PhD, Escola Tècnica superior d’Arquitectura de Reus, Universitat rovira i Virgili, gerard.fortuny@urv.cat

4) PhD candidate, Escola Tècnica superior d’Arquitectura de Reus, Universitat rovira i Virgili, sergiocollpla@gmail.com

Val d’Aran is located in the north side of the Spanish Pirineo, between Spain and France. There we can find a group of Romanic churches built in the XIIth Century, which present large geometrical deformations of more than 10% from the initial form. The basilical churches were initially covered with timber roofs. Later these were replaced by barrel vaults supported by non-monolithic columns with circular section [1].

Of particular interest is the church of Santa Maria d’Arties (XII-XIII), whose large deformations were previously discussed by several authors including Villanueva [4], Bassegoda [3], Sáez [5] and Polo [6]. This work presents the analytical assessment of the masonry structure of this Romanesque church, where the constructive materials are working to the limit. A limit analysis by means of thrust-lines and a FEM calculation has been performed to assess the large movements of the structural elements and to determine its possible causes.

Keywords: masonry, FEM, limit analysis, Romanic, Val d’Aran