STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF A RESTORED BYZANTINE MONASTERY: EFFECTIVENESS OF THE INTERVENTIONS

The effectiveness of the restoration interventions carried out on the Byzantine monastery of St. Nicholas at Mesopotam, Albania, is discussed. The interventions aimed at consolidating the church, while bringing it back to its original conditions. Two finite element models were developed: one describing the church as it was until 2009, and one after the planned intervention. The models try to reproduce as accurately as possible the main geometric details of the building, and take into account the macroscopically orthotropic behaviour of masonry and the main cracks. Linear elastic analyses of both models were carried out considering gravity loads and lateral loads equivalent to seismic actions according to the Italian standards. The numerical results show that, in the occurrence of an earthquake, the stress in the building would considerably increase after the restoration interventions. In particular, removal of a buttress turns out to be an operation controversial, not to say detrimental.