ANÁLISIS LÍMITE DE BÓVEDAS DE CRUCERÍA: LA IGLESIA DE SANTA MARÍA LA MAYOR DE VILLAMURIEL DE CERRATO

The church of Santa María la Mayor in the Spanish village of Villamuriel de Cerrato (Palencia) has endured throughout its lifetime several alterations that had considerably modified its structural behavior. Its current condition presents different pathologies – mainly fissures and detachments – which show the existence of severe deformations. In order to analyse the structural behaviour of the ribbed vaults that cover the naves, as well as to characterise the origin and the extent of their pathologies, limit analysis with finite friction has been applied to masonry. This proposal allows to approach the security coefficient – with respect to the minimum thickness of the vault – and to establish the possible existence of failure due to the sliding of pieces of the severies. Knowing the historical development of the building and its current configuration, and the application of the proposal has resulted in the modeling of the structural behavior of the vaults in the different load states – both the real ones during its useful life and the different hypothesis in future states. According to the results obtained, the adaptation of several actions can be assessed and the most important parameters can be stressed. Similarly, it has been proved that the main problem in the application of the proposal rests on the geometric definition of the vaults and the loads. The reason is that they can cause important problems in the case of complex vaulted structures and this involves extensive previous works to understand the structural behavior.