The disused factories’ areas represent a considerable part of the industrial archaeology of the city of Naples. In the last decades of the previous century, many of these factories were disused also because of the ban of asbestos production by the Italian law 257/1992. Of course, this was not the only problem that concurred to create a large amount of disused industrial areas. Often the simple delocalisation of manufactories in other countries contributed to this problem. The reuse of these areas requires polluted and contaminated land reclamation. The simple removal of the shallow soil layers is a widely used reclamation procedure. Furthermore, drilling operations either for piling or for tunnelling may incur in the same type of problem taking into account that this movement can be very expensive depending on the total volume of soil to be removed and to be taken to disposal. In this study a hybrid pile type is proposed as an environmentally friendly and a cheap solution. Hybrid piles are installed by a combination of pushing and augering technique. This installation method allows avoiding the removal and the subsequent disposal of shallow contaminated soil. The mechanical behaviour of three hybrid piles equipped with strain gauges along the shaft is investigated via three loading tests. In the framework of the design of a new mall in a disused industrial area, the opportunity to provide a fully sustainable foundation solution by equipping the piles with heat exchangers pipes is also investigated. Numerical simulations of the energy hybrid pile behaviour are presented outlining further benefits of the new hybrid installation technique and comparing two different configuration of the heat exchanger pipes. Doi: 10.28991/HEF-2021-02-03-010 Full Text: PDF

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Energy piles are an innovative technology that couples the role of the structural foundation to the role of the heat exchanger to satisfy the energy needs of buildings and infrastructures. In the last decade insight into the mechanisms governing the thermo-mechanical response of single energy piles have been gained via full-scale in-situ tests, numerical analyses and model-scale experiments. The numerical approaches allow testing a large variety of configurations, geometries, materials, thermo-mechanical loadings and boundary conditions in a rather controlled but relatively easy and cost-effective manner. As a widespread habit it should be remarked that the temperature changes adopted in the piles have been only rarely justified based on realistic heating and cooling demands of live buildings. This numerical study investigates the effects of combination of mechanical and thermal loads on the mechanical behaviour of a single energy pile embedded in a typical pyroclastic soil deposit of Campania region, in Southern Italy. Thermal loads over one year have been determined by means of Design Builder software analysing a building in Napoli; the intermittent operation of the heat pump over daily time scale is properly modelled in the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical axisymmetric FE analyses. A sensitivity analysis has been carried out to investigate the effects of the surface thermal boundary conditions.

Research is increasingly focusing on thermal properties of concrete with the aim of reducing the heat exchange between buildings and environment. On the other hand, concretes with high thermal conductivity could have interesting applications in the field of thermo-active ground structures as Geothermal Energy Piles (GEPs). This kind of foundations represent an environmentally friendly technology that allows exploiting the heat of the shallow earth surface to supply renewable energy for the air conditioning of buildings. GEPs are needed for structural and geotechnical reasons and allow recovering the installation costs connected to vertical boreholes. Concrete drilled or driven piles are equipped with a Primary Circuit (PC) of high-density polyethylene plastic pipes attached to the reinforcement cages. Thermal energy is extracted from or injected into the ground thought a carrier fluid that flows into the pipes of the PC. To improve the heat exchange between the pile and soil the thermal properties of the concrete should be considered as design parameters. Concrete thermal conductivity, contrary to what happens for the buildings, should be increased to optimise the thermal performance of the GEPs. Different solutions that modify the mix design of concrete are proposed to the aim of increasing the thermal performance of GEPs.

Cultural and historic buildings, such as ancient palaces and churches are rare and irreplaceable wealth of human civilization. Unfortunately, they are often impacted by natural calamities and anthropogenic activities. Consequently, the monitoring and preventive diagnosis of structure's deformation, as well as their surroundings, are essential for their safeguarding and conservation. Highprecision and efficient monitoring facilitates the early recognition of potential risks and enables preventive diagnosis of heritage sites.This work shows the potentiality of remote sensing technique as a complementary tool for the analysis of the movements of Benedictine Basilica of S. Angelo in Formis, an important monumental building in the area north of Napoli in Southern Italy.Geological survey of the area, subsoil investigations and the integrated analysis of remote sensing and geodetic data, allowed to perform a very careful and detailed investigation about the structural performance of the Basilica. In detail, Differential Synthetic Aperture Radar (DInSAR) data have permitted a global interpretation of the Basilica's deformation and its surrounding areas: C-band products, available starting from 2003, have been integrated with topographic measurements, providing building displacement time-series which confirmed the occurrence of differential settlements of the monument.