Structural Health Monitoring of an Historical Building: The Main Spire of the Duomo Di Milano

ABSTRACT

Health assessment of historical buildings by means of monitoring systems is for sure a fundamental step to preserve architectural heritage, especially for countries as Italy, rich in ancient monuments. Events such as earthquakes or severe weather phenomena constitute a major risk for these buildings because of their age and the related weakness to sustain exceptional excitations. The availability of a continuous, real-time, and automatic structural health monitoring system is considered a useful tool for early detection of a potentially dangerous situation for the structure and its occupants. The choice of the best measurement strategy provided by the monitoring system is crucial: a compromise must be found between the need of information, complexity of the measuring system and the related costs.

Due to the difficulty in modelling most historical structures, it is a hard task to fix proper and safe limits relying on model-generated predictions only. The availability of long-term records of the structural response can help get this goal, not just relying on models, but also detecting changes in some parameters obtained from time records.

This article presents a challenging example: the structural health monitoring of the Duomo di Milano main spire during and after restoration.

KEYWORDS:

• Automatic monitoring system
• continuous monitoring
• dynamic measurements
• experimental techniques
• restoration
• static measurements
• structural health monitoring

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo for having guided and funded the research presented in this article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo for having guided and funded the research presented in this article.