Investigation of wind actions and effects on the Leaning Tower of Pisa

Abstract

This paper describes wind investigations for the Leaning Tower of Pisa which were conducted as part of an overall evaluation of its behaviour. Normally a short, stiff and heavy building would not be a candidate for detailed wind analyses. However, because of extremely high soil pressures developed from its inclination, there has been increasing concern that environmental loading such as wind actions could combine with existing conditions to cause the collapse of the tower. The studies involved wind assessment at the site as a function of wind direction, analysis of historical wind data to determine extreme wind probabilities of occurrence, estimation of structural properties, analytical and boundary layer wind tunnel investigations of wind loads and evaluation of the response with special concern for loads in the direction of inclination of the tower and significant wake effects from the neighboring cathedral for critical wind directions. The conclusions discuss the role of wind on structural safety, the precision of results attained and possible future studies involving field measurements aimed at validating or improving the analytical and boundary layer wind tunnel based assessments.