Contribution of geomatic models to Structural Engineering

The purpose of this thesis is to define which could be the possible contribute of geomatic models to Structural Engineering. It results that, beside mechanical and costitutive characteristic of the object, the knowledge of geometry is as well necessary for the definition of the confidence factor of structure. However, contrary to what it could be expected, most of geometric models used for structural analysis are really simple, since are often developed starting from plants and sections obtained from direct survey, and therefore poor of details. This simplification is acceptable for the largest part of modern constructions, because of their regularity and symmetry, but is not indicated for buildings and objects belonging to cultural heritage, which present much more complex geometries. For this kind of objects it is possible to operate through geomatic surveying, obtaining realistic 3D models that reproduce geometry in high fidelity. These technique are nowadays used in many fields, but are not so frequently applied in structural analysis. Probably, this lack of connection between the two disciplines is due to the fact that as much Geomatics seeks precision as much Structural Analysis tries to simplify. The goal of this research is trying to find a meeting point between models realized through Geomatics and that ones used for structural Analysis. Therefore, the challenge will consiste in finding the correct level of detail of models, in order to represent faithfully the object, without loosing important information, but also in a way that could be adaptable for Structural Analysis. Three different sizes of objects were therefore modelled and structural analysed, by a finite element method software. Through this procedure was therefore verified that, if opportunely processed, geomatic models allow to obtain more accurate results than simplified ones.