Alessandro Grazzini¹, and Marco Zerbinatti¹
1)  Politecnico di Torino
Corso Duca degli Abruzzi 24 – 10129 Turin (Italy)
e-mail: {alessandro.grazzini, marco.zerbinatti}@polito.it

Keywords: Dry stone masonry, Mountain architectural heritage, Seismic retrofit.

Abstract. The mountain architectural heritage built with dry stone technique offers interesting case studies in terms of recovery and safeguarding. The variety of case studies, in relationship with the ancient construction technologies, offers focuses for disciplinary insights. The double-facing layering techniques with flat-faced elements, with stone slats that take advantage the mutual meshing of transverse and longitudinal axes, offers interesting resistance situations to dynamic actions not yet fully known. The intuition of the past builders, now can be investigated and to be useful in the recovery of this heritage (for residential uses, e.g.), also in the key to improving their seismic behaviour. This paper describes some in situ tests and possible sustainable solutions to strengthen the original structures (stone walls and roofs, wooden floors) according to current regulations while at the same time preserving their historical and architectonic values. The masonry texture was characterized by a finite elements modelling of a building case study, in order to analyze the seismic behaviour of masonry structures according to the technical standards Italian constructions.