Seismic Investigation and Retrofit of Villa Vannucchi in the Vesuvius Area

The seismic safety evaluation, together with adequate retrofitting operations, constitute useful and necessary tools to ensure the conservation and protection of the artistic and architectural heritage. Starting from these premises, the current paper deals with the seismic vulnerability assessment of an ancient mansion, Villa Vannucchi, placed in San Giorgio a Cremano, in the district of Naples. The study of the behaviour of the construction, covered by the bond of Superintendence of Cultural Heritage, has been pursued following the instructions of Italian Guidelines on Cultural Heritage (IGCH), which proposed three evaluation levels having an increasing detail degree. After collecting the main historical, geometrical and structural features regarding the Villa, firstly a qualitative analysis (EL1) has been performed obtaining two indices representative of the “health” of the building. Subsequently, via EL2, local mechanisms have been investigated. The vulnerability assessment has been completed through a global verification (EL3) by modeling the building on a computer software, which gives back the seismic safety facto α, defined as the ratio between capacity and demand acceleration. Based on the achieved results, a consolidation plan, including different compatible operations, has been hypothesized to reduce the seismic of the vulnerability of the Villa. Finally, the effectiveness of the interventions has been demonstrated by static non-linear analyses, which have shown an improvement of the α index.