MECHANICAL CHARACTERIZATION OF FICTILE ELEMENTS TYPICAL OF MEDITERRANEAN ARCHITECTURE

The Mediterranean area is characterized by the presence of many buildings with a particular importance from historical point of view. These historical structures are characterized by the presence of special elements cables usually used to built lightweight vaulted structures, but also as a technical or architectural elements of less importance. In the present work a brief review and a classification of the different typology of the so called "caruselli" is carried out. The "caruselli" are cables elements, positioned in a concentric and staggered way, whose two lateral faces are placed alongside one another. The lack of knowledge on structural and cultural value of the building systems based on the use of "caruselli", led to conduct a detailed study finalized to understanding of this construction system taking account of various historical developments and its technological and structural changes. Following a direct analysis on an existing structure, taking account of the morphological, mechanical and structural characteristics of materials, an accurate cataloguing was carried out, both of the single fictile element that the structural aggregations derived. In particular, a barrel-vaulted was investigated, outlining the technological system and the interaction between the barrel vault, object of study, and the overall structure. For this purpose, specimens of "caruselli" and a macroelement of the barrel vault of a farm of Crotone, a city from Calabria, have been taken and analyzed. Mechanical characterization tests were carried out at Testing Materials and Structures Laboratory of University of Calabria, Italy, in order to analyzed the load capacity of specimens and to compare the strength experimental values obtained with the results achieved by static analysis.