Characterization of Full-Scale, Human-Form, Culturally Important Statues: Case Study

Abstract

Earthquakes continue to demonstrate the vulnerability of freestanding structures (namely, statues). This, coupled with their cultural significance, underlines the need to understand their behavior and develop reliable tools to predict their response due to seismic loads. Although a number of numerical studies have been conducted to understand the dynamic response of rigid bodies, accurate statue geometry and mass distribution is fundamental to a statue-specific analysis. This paper presents a survey of 24 marble statues located in Florence, Italy, with the goal of using advanced imaging and processing tools to characterize their geometric, mass, and boundary conditions. The survey is focused on freestanding, full-scale, human-form, culturally important marble statues. For 4 of the surveyed statues, two nonintrusive approaches to geometric data acquisition are presented and compared: (1) light detection and ranging (LiDAR) and (2) structure from motion (SfM). Using the resultant geometric and mass properties, time history analyses of the statues subject to seismic excitation are conducted. These analyses illustrate the poor performance of models when data derived from SfM-based characterization is utilized.