No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The paper summarizes the conceptual development of a vibration-based strategy suitable to the structural health monitoring of ancient masonry towers and exemplifies its application in the continuous dynamic monitoring of the tallest historic tower in Mantua, Italy. The presented approach is based on the installation of low-cost monitoring systems (consisting of few accelerometers and temperature sensors) and on the combined use of automated operational modal analysis, regression models to mitigate the environmental effects on identified natural frequencies and multivariate statistical tools to detect the occurrence of abnormal structural changes. The application of the adopted strategy to 15 months of continuously collected experimental data: (1) highlighted the effect of temperature on the automatically identified natural frequencies; (2) demonstrated the practical feasibility of damage detection methods based on natural frequency shifts; (3) provided a clear evidence of the possible key role of continuous dynamic monitoring in the preventive conservation of historic towers

The structural assessment of a Cultural Heritage building is a step-by-step process that merges research methodologies and information from several disciplines. Although general rules that can be applied to all historic constructions are very difficult to define, it is generally agreed (Binda, Saisi, and Tiraboschi 2000) that the first phase of a correct diagnostic approach (i.e., the evaluation of the current health state or performance of the building) consists of the following tasks:• Historic and documentary research and on site geometric survey, aimed at collecting all the essential information on the building geometry, its evolution, and the construction technology;