Stability and seismic analyses of leaning towers: the case of the minaret in Jam

The leaning Minaret of Jam, one of the tallest in the world, was declared as the Afghanistan's first World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2002. The global stability analysis of the tower against soil collapse is first evaluated in the present configuration, in the hypothesis of increasing bending moment at the base section, assuming elastic-perfect plastic behavior for the soil. Then, a finite element model is set up, which is used for the modal analysis and then for the seismic push-over analysis, based on both single and multi-modal approaches.