Benjamín Torres¹, Paula Rinaudo¹, Pedro A. Calderón¹, Juan J. Moragues¹, and Jose M. Adam¹
1)  ICITECH, Universitat Politècnica de València
Camino de Vera s/n, 46022, Valencia, Spain
e-mail: {bentorgo, pauri, pcaldero, jmorague, joadmar}@upv.sp

Keywords: Cross-vault, Accidental Load, Settlement, Monitoring.

Abstract. Although society is becoming increasingly aware of the need to preserve the cultural heritage and in spite of the efforts that have already been made, a lot of work still remains to be done. One of the biggest worries at the present time is the damage that can be caused by accidents and extreme events to different types of buildings. In accordance with present needs, ICITECH (Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain) is involved in the SIMAX project, which aims to study, among other things, the effects of soil settlement on different structural masonry elements. A recent test was carried out on a full-scale masonry cross-vault, measuring 4×4 m2, identical to those in the San Lorenzo Church in Castell de les Cabres (Spain) in which the force acting on the vault was its self-weight. One of the vault supports was subjected to settlement in order to characterize its behaviour until failure. This paper contains the most important results obtained from the test.