Model Updating Through Identified Frequencies of an Historical Stocky Structure Building with Wooden Floors

The scope of the paper is to present the analysis of an important historical building the “San James” theater actually used as the Municipality House in the city of Corfù (Greece). The building, that is located in the center of the city, is characterized by an extremely stocky shape, and by the presence of wooden floors. Moreover, the upper part of the building has been realized many years after the end of the works of the main part of the building. The aforementioned considerations do not allow to be sure about the “box” behavior of the building and makes the dynamic analysis and tests of great importance for the exactly comprehension of its structural behavior. With this aim an extensive experimental campaign has been performed: in detail 18 accelerometers with high sensitivity have been installed and the ambient vibrations of building have been recorded. In the present paper the performed experimental tests and the analysis of the experimental data are discussed and compared with a finite element model of the examined building. At this aim an important task of the present research is related to the consideration that all the floors are made by wood and so, the analysis of the experimental data and the dynamical identification could be influenced by the presence of local modes. This problem has been tackled by introducing a ‘single wall analysis’strategy for demonstrating the global behavior of the estimated experimental modes that may be used for updating the building FE model.