THE TOWER OF PISA

INTRODUCTION:

The Leaning Tower of Pisa is part of an architectural complex known as the "Piazza",
which includes the Cathedral ("Duomo"), the Baptistery and the Monumental Cemetery,
declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, and visited every year by millions of people.
tourists.
The state of the Tower is a very serious challenge, not only because it is leaning more and
more (currently reaching a value of 5°30') but also because of the danger of a sudden
collapse of the structure. As a precautionary measure, the Tower was closed to visitors in
1989.
In 1990 the Italian Government appointed an International Committee with the purpose of
safeguarding the Tower. Due to the wide spectrum of tasks to be addressed, the
Committee was conceived as a multidisciplinary body with experts in art history,
construction and restoration materials, structural engineers and geotechnicians.
The purpose of the studies that were carried out was to understand the scenarios
surrounding the monument, as well as to make decisions on temporary or permanent
interventions focused on increasing security with respect to the collapse and collapse of
the Tower. Meanwhile, appropriate concepts were developed to intervene in architectural
restoration.
From the point of view of materials, the central body of the Tower is weak. This, together
with the characteristics of the structure and the instability of the foundation/subsoil system,
causes the inclination to increase the compression stresses on the south side (precisely
towards which it is inclined) where mechanical damage to the materials is preferentially
located. that make up the building.
In order to achieve the reinforcement of the factory, preliminary investigations were
directed towards the consideration of various aspects: nature and physical-mechanical
properties of the construction materials, and resistance to the load of the most weakened
areas of the structure. .

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GOALS:
0.1 General objective:

- Foundation analysis of the Pisa tower and palace of fine arts.

0.2 Specific objective:

- Recognition of the importance of foundations for buildings, through different

types of soils .

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
I. HISTORY OF ITS CONSTRUCTION
The construction of the bell tower for the cathedral of the Tuscan city of Pisa was
commissioned by the architect Bonanno Pisano around the year 1173. It was
proposed to erect a bell tower in the shape of a column and separate from the church.
However, it was soon observed that the tower's foundations were too weak, which
caused it to begin to lean (at first it tilted about 5 cm. towards the southeast) after the
completion of the first three floors.
The cause of the twisting of the work was the unstable subsoil on which the tower was
being built. Pisano feared that his reputation as an architect would be affected and
ordered the work to stop.
Almost 100 years later, Giovanni di Simone took the risk of resuming construction and
tried to compensate for the leaning of the tower by building the four missing floors
vertically. The consequences were catastrophic, as the bell tower continued to lean.
Di Simone realized his mistake and ordered the work to stop again even though the
place where the bells were to be placed was not built. In 1298 a deviation from the
plumb line of 1.43 m was measured, and in 1360 this figure had already increased to
1.63 m. With everything. Tommaso Pisano decided to continue the construction of the
bell tower and finish the work. To do this, he arranged the clearing vertically on the
inclined building. In 1372, the bell tower was ready for its inauguration.
In the following centuries, the tower's inclination slowed down. It is assumed that its
weight—about 14,500 tons—ended up compacting the soil, which allowed some
stabilization of the building. In 1835, the architect Alessandro Gherardesca made a
first attempt at rehabilitation; To do this, he eliminated the soft muddy floor and
replaced it with a marble base.

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 In 1350 the inclination was 1.40 meters, in 1817 it was 3.80 meters and in 1993 it was
4.47 meters. After the works, the inclination of the tower fell back to 4.10 meters in
2001 and from there to the current 3.99 meters.
The result was disastrous , since instead of providing greater solidity to the tower,
Gherardesca's action caused a new tilt. In 1918, the deviation of the plumb line was
already 5.1 tons. Until 1990, the inclination of the tower increased from 1 to 1.2 mm.
annual. Given the impossibility of reversing this situation and for security reasons, the
symbol of the city of Pisa was closed to visitors on January 7, 1990.
The Italian government has undertaken numerous measures for the conservation of
this unique monument. Thus, in 1994 and 1995, 690 tons of lead were placed in the
northern part of the tower in the form of bars as a counterweight; Its fixation was
carried out by inserting a series of anchors buried in the ground, 40 m away. deep. So
far, the measure works, so the tilt of the tower has been stopped. In contrast, other
stabilization attempts, such as concrete injections into the foundations or freezing the
ground, have been unsuccessful. In 1998, the northern part of the tower was secured
using two steel cables 100 ni long and weighing 4 tons each.

II. CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TOWER OF PISA

2.1 Tower Structure
It can be described as a hollow cylinder weighing 14,500 t, just over 58 m high and
about 13 m in outside diameter. Its walls, 4.09 m thick, house the spiral staircase with
which you access the bell tower; The walls are made of low-quality masonry, covered
with marble. Between the second and eighth levels its section decreases due to the
presence of galleries of marble columns in each loggia or floor. Some of the marble
pieces come from Roman structures that were demolished.

2.2 Foundation of the Tower

It is a circular footing with a diameter of 19.6 m at a maximum depth of 5.5 m and an
average width of 7.54 m; The contact area of the foundation is 285.8 m2 and the
average pressure it transmits is 50.7 t/m2. The foundation of the Tower is illustrated in
Fig. 2; It is known that there are Etruscan and Roman remains at the site.

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2.3 Underground under the Tower.
Between 1908 and 1965, 43 boreholes of different types were carried out, including
some that were drilled directly under the tower; Between 1965 and 1966, another
14 surveys were carried out, as well as a few more in the mid-1980s. The Tower is
planted on a strongly preconsolidated sandy silt, with very low plasticity (IP = 13%,
undrained resistance of 0.63 kg/cm2); Under this stratum the Pancone clay
appears where three substrata have been distinguished; Overlying the last of these
is, interspersed, another deposit of silty sand about 2 m thick. The entire clay
sequence covers thicknesses of the order of 12 m. Its undrained resistance varies
between 0.5 kg/cm2 in the upper clay and 1.6.kg/cm2 in the lower one. Finally, at
about 37 m depth, beneath the clays, the lower sands appear, which are high-
density materials. In Fig. 2 shows a section from north to south where the
stratigraphy of the subsoil under the Tower is schematically illustrated. As can be
seen, the forces transmitted by the Tower into the subsoil caused significant
deformations in the superficial sandy silt and Pancone clay. In Fig. 3 presents the
details of four of the electrical cone surveys carried out in the 1970s.

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III. BEHAVIORAL PROBLEMS AT THE TOWER OF PISA

3.1 Origins of the problem.

Studies on the subsidence and inclinations of the Tower have verified that the problem
originated because the sandy silts located to the south are slightly more compressible than
those to the north. That is, they specified that the difference in compressibilities in these
strata and not in the clay that underlies them is what caused the problem; Consequently,
its origin is not a lack of resistance to shear stress either (Burland, 1992; Viggiani 1999;
Jamilolkowsky et al, 1999). In these analyzes the occurrence of delayed deformations
(creep) in sandy silts has also been considered to explain some aspects of the observed
behavior.

3.2 Instability mechanism

Prof. Burland's research shows that the center of rotation of the Tower is approximately at
the level of the first cornice, which means that, when the Tower rotates, the southern end
of its foundation penetrates into the ground while its northern end emerges. slowly.
Furthermore, the analysis of the temporal evolution of the gyres showed that when
regional pumping for water extraction has been intensified or when boreholes have been
drilled, such as those carried out in 1935, to waterproof the foundation and in 1985 to carry
out geotechnical probes exploratory. The center of rotation of the Tower is moved and the
rotation occurs around a point located approximately at the level of the natural terrain,
which in all these cases has caused sudden increases in the speed of collapse. A diagram
is presented in which the ground-tower system is represented in a simplified way.
The model presented there is due to Prof. Burland, and corrects the rotation mechanism
previously proposed by Banti and Sampolesi (1997). It is an inverted pendulum with a
concentrated mass - the Tower is idealized as a rigid element - supported by a spring

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whose rotational rigidity depends on the elasto-plastic characteristics of the soil as well as
the evolution of these characteristics over time. If the tower rotates a certain angle, the
rotation in the spring representing the supporting ground will not necessarily be the same;
The danger is that the rotational mechanism reaches yield. In fact, the system was in a
limit state of stability in which any disturbance of the ground-tower system would have
caused the collapse, as was also demonstrated by studies using the finite element method
as well as the analysis of the behavior of physical models. on a reduced scale, even some
tested in centrifugal machines.

IV. FOUNDATION OF THE TOWER OF PISA

Currently, it can be seen that the tower has an inclination towards the North, with a
variation in the thickness of the stone blocks that form the front part of the walls since,
during construction, some adjustments possibly had to be made in the inclination. The
rules followed by the builders were certainly the following: try to keep the layers of
masonry horizontal, and make the central axis of the Tower remain vertical. Likewise, the
bell tower was built more vertically on the cylindrical structure: in the northern part there
are four steps, from the seventh corner to the floor of the bell tower, while in the southern
part there are six. The result was the well-known "banana", due to its curved shape.
Another important structure in the Tower is the hole ("catino") excavated in 1838 in order
to expose the anchors of the columns and the base of the steps, then covered as a result
of settlement.
The floor of the "catino" was reinforced with 80-90 cm of a layer of thick conglomerate,
partly laid during the Gherardesca intervention, and partly during the "filling" work with
grout on the foundations, carried out in 1935- 38. This agglomerate was attached to the
foundation through hollow steel bars used to seal the "catino". There was no

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documentation about this layer of conglomerate until it was discovered in 1995 when the
subsoil of the Tower was frozen. This work was preliminary to the construction of a cement
ring around the foundations, as part of a project to insert into the subsoil, in the North area,
10 anchors, with a depth of 60 m, in order to help maintain the stability of the Tower. The
project was suspended, waiting to see the results of the subsoil excavation in the North
area, carried out to reduce the inclination of the Tower.

It can be described as a hollow cylinder weighing 14,500 tons, just over 58 meters high
and nearly 13 meters in outer diameter. Its walls, 4.09 meters thick, house the spiral
staircase with which you access the bell tower; The walls are made of low-quality
masonry, covered with marble.
Between the second and eighth levels its section decreases due to the presence of
galleries of marble columns on each floor. Some of the marble pieces come from Roman
structures that were demolished.

CURIOSITY
- How at that time they had the advanced knowledge for such a construction
without the help of technological instruments that we know today

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 - Because the tower does not collapse due to its inclination and the external
effects that occur on the structure

SOURCES
1. Study from the University of the North called “FOUNDATION
ANALYSIS OF THE TOWER OF PISA (ITALY)”
2. Internet
CONCLUSIONS
The tower of Pisa, a few months after its construction began, showed an inclination
towards the north, where the construction stopped several times and several details of the
construction had to be rethought. In short, the Tower of Pisa is an engineering challenge.
the type of soil on which it was built

RECOMMENDATIONS
Due to the inclination of the tower of Pisa, one could stabilize it horizontally so as not to
have some inconveniences as time passes and collapse due to external factors since each
time the ground gives way to the inclination of the tower.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://conoceitalia.com/c-pisa/torre-de-pisa/

http://esculturasymonumentos.com/c-italia/torre-de-pisa/

https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torre_de_Pisa

Study from the University of the North called “FOUNDATION ANALYSIS OF

THE TOWER OF PISA (ITALY)”
https://historiaybiografias.com/torre_pisa/

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