The debate on the strengthening of two slender masonry structures in early XX century: A contribution to the history of wind engineering

Abstract

In this paper, the debates and the studies carried out in the first half of the XX century on the dynamic response of two slender masonry structures to wind actions are presented. The two buildings are the St. Gaudenzio Basilica in Novara and the Mole Antonelliana in Turin, both designed by the Italian Architect Alessandro Antonelli at the end of XIX century. Their exceptional audacity (121 and 167.5m high, respectively) raised many doubts on their structural safety, leading between 1930 and 1954 to many consolidation interventions. In the case of St. Gaudenzio, these works apparently produced new damage, in an impressive sequence of failure and interventions. For this reason, a heated debate concerning the dynamic response of the structure to wind action was aroused between 1939 and 1942. In the case of Mole Antonelliana, wind action was only marginally considered until the collapse of the spire in 1953, but its reconstruction was undertaken through a number of experimental tests carried out in the wind tunnel of the Aeronautics Laboratory of Turin Polytechnic in 1954. These experiments were among the first pioneering wind tunnel tests on civil structures in Europe.