Ancient structures, especially very old ones, prove their soundness and the correctness of their structural layout by reaching our days in good conditions. This is the case of the Roman Arena in Verona—Italy, built in the first century A.D., and still standing in the historical centre of Verona. It became certainly the symbol of the city and it is open to public use for visits and also for operas, concerts and relevant shows. However, with a closer look, it is possible to appraise damages that the passing of time and the natural or man-induced events such as historical earthquakes and floods or wars and sieges left on the structure. Seismic events (the worst ones recorded in 1116, 1117 and in 1183) induced serious damages on the Arena since they caused the almost complete collapse of the third external ring of the monument, today only remaining in the so-called ‘‘wing’’ of the Arena, a freestanding curved wall composed by huge blocks of stone and characterized by a repetition of arches and massive pillars. With the purpose of evaluating the structural response of the Arena to static, dynamic (e.g. shows, concerts) and seismic loads, a structural health monitoring (SHM) system was installed in 2011, with a state-of-the-art technology to record meaningful data through a sensors’ network installed in relevant positions of the monument. A detailed crack pattern survey was carried out to identify main cracks and damages and select the most suitable positions for static sensors, able to control the reversibility of the seasonal displacements or deformations trends of the monument. Ambient vibration tests were also carried out to extract the fundamental modal parameters and calibrate/update reference finite elements models: global modes were identified and—with a special focus on the wing—acceleration sensors were installed in the areas where significant dynamic amplifications are expected according to the numerical simulation. The paper reports the preliminary activities carried out before the installation of the SHM system and illustrates the results of the first 1.5 year of monitoring analysing both the operational conditions of the structure and its response in case of exceptional events. Specific algorithms were developed and implemented to perform the continuous real-time treatment of static data and the automated identification of modal parameters
In the last decade the number of structural health monitoring (SHM) systems designed and implemented on historic structures increased exponentially. Monitoring perfectly meets principles and guidelines of the recently issued Italian and European seismic codes as it is considered a strategic activity in the knowledge process of historic buildings, in order to understand their structural behavior and have a deeper insight on their health conditions. Thanks to SHM it is possible to intervene on buildings with more confidence (and only when necessary), but also to prevent the execution of intrusive strengthening interventions, in full compliance with the minimum intervention principle, so important in the restoration field. The object of monitoring is to identify, locate and classify type and severity of damages induced by external actions or degradation phenomena and to assess their effects on the structural performance. In this way it is possible to take appropriate measures to reduce the danger of collapse and, when necessary, perform strengthening interventions to improve the structural and seismic capacity. Motivated by the above reasons, the paper provide a contribution to the application of integrated methodologies and techniques, based on SHM, for the assessment and protection of cultural heritage (CH) buildings and existing structures. Selected case studies, equipped with distributed sensors and acquisition systems, allowed the definition and successive validation of SHM as a knowledge-based assessment tool, implemented to: (1) avoid the execution of unnecessary interventions and assess structural vulnerabilities; (2) evaluate intervention needs, following an incremental approach during their execution; (3) control the damage states of buildings in a post- seismic scenario. Monitoring data, automatically processed through dedicated software for static monitoring and automated algorithms for modal parameters extraction, are then used for the assessment of the health conditions and the identification of active damaging processes based on numerical simulations and robust statistical models
We present the recent results obtained by a system which measures both 3D shape and multispectral texture of artistic and architectural cultural assets. The system consists on a rangefinder device which acquires the range and a visible scanning spectrograph for colour texture analysis. This technique is applied to the acquisition of the cycle of Stories of Maria, a frescoed lateral chapel painted by Girolamo Tessari in 1523-1526 located in the church of S. Francesco in Padua (Italy).
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