BIM Methodology applied to Structural Analysis of the Built Heritage

Resumo

Built heritage is one of the key elements through which the identity and culture of a society manifests
itself. The so-called Building Information Model (BIM) is a methodology that has gained wide notoriety in
fulfilling the role of portraying the physical characteristics and storing information of historic monuments. One of
the most useful applications of the BIM methodology is structural analysis, which can be performed based on the
graphic representation of the building itself. Structural analysis makes it possible to obtain parameters that are of
great value for the study, maintenance, monitoring, and eventual repair of structures. The present work had the
objective of comparing two parallel models of the “Nossa Senhora de Fátima” church, known as “Igrejinha”, in
Brasília, and the results of their respective structural analyses. The first model was developed based on the
structural documents of the building, and the second one, based on accurate survey methods usually employed in
historic BIM modeling - terrestrial laser scanning and aerophotogrammetry. The methodology adopted was based
on automatically obtaining the analysis results from the architectural representation of the building and its
corresponding analytical abstraction. The physical comparison of the models showed a high dimensional
similarity. The resulting values of the structural analysis showed, however, significant variations for certain
internal forces, demonstrating the influence of the modeling process and the discretization of the structure on the
calculation results.