Simulació de fàbrica posttesada : Església del Sagrat Cor de Jesús a Vistabella

Abstract

The Sacred Heart Church (Vistabella, 1923) is a modernist building designed by Josep Maria Jujol, one of the masters of Catalan Modernism and collaborator of Antoní Gaudí. The steeple of this iconic church is especially vulnerable to the stain produced by the wind action, due to its slenderness and the materials that were used by its construction. It became obvious in 1934, when the upper part of the steeple crumbled away and it was rebuilt adding a reinforced system with passive steel bars fixed in the structure. Based on a structural study of this steeple, in 2015, it came to the conclusion that the reinforced passive system was not enough to ensure its stability. Therefore, a new reinforced active system with gradually prestressed iron bars around the steeple was implemented in order to provide a certain degree of precompression and improvement against the action of the wind, reducing or removing its tensile stresses from the masonry of the steeple. This dissertation is a study of the behavior of the steeple against the action of the wind during both scenarios to evaluate the improvement achieved on this intrinsic issue shown since its first construction