Design of the New Inner Frame for the Vittoria Alata di Brescia: How Engineering Design May Support Ancient Bronze Restoration

Abstract

Mechanical design and engineering can support projects with highadded value in the Cultural Heritage field, such as restoration of artefacts like statues and architectonical decorations. Many examples have been carried out, along the recent past, in the field of ancient bronze restorations (as for Marco Aurelio, Satiro Danzante di Mazara del Vallo and Principe Ellenistico). Engineering design techniques help the assessment of structural problems through physical measurements and FEA simulations; the digital acquisition of the surfaces represents a fundamental base for CAD modelling, and the inner frame design helps for guaranteeing stability and manoeuvrability requirements for transport and exhibition. Workflow peculiarities and requirements to accomplish the restorers' activities and investigations may highlight best practices and rules. The design of the new inner frame of the Vittoria Alata of Brescia, an ancient roman bronze statue, represents a recent example of this kind. Its design workflow was provided in the loop of the restoration program, and it was assessed considering structural integrity, surfaces protection, inner inaccessibility, and dimensions. The solutions adopted are the result of a collaborative process with restorers to evaluate each proposed concept, in compliance with the studies and the constraints highlighted during the investigations. CAD-CAE tools applied starting from the 3D acquisition, helped the development and its verification, reducing the efforts during the manufacturing phase and final set-up. This paper aims to discuss the obtained result demonstrating how structural analysis and mechanical design anchored to 3D acquisitions may help restoration of bronze statues.

Convolutional Neural Network for Background Removal in Close Range Photogrammetry: Application on Cultural Heritage Artefacts

“…Furthermore, currently, the usage of close-range photogrammetry for the obtainment of a reverse engineered model of the retrieval represents an outstanding procedure in terms of speed, accuracy, and costs. 3D models by reverse engineering support investigations and exhibition set-up as demonstrated by the works recently made on the Vittoria Alata of Brescia [12] and the periodic maintenance of ancient statues of the Palazzo Massimo site in Rome, part of the Museo Nazionale Romano [13,14]. Among them, the Principe Ellenistico was recently acquired through closerange photogrammetry and the results were compared with laser scanner techniques, finding that the adoption of commercial cameras and software may provide good results also with reflective surfaces if a virtual cage for camera orientation is set [15].…”

Guidelines for Topology Optimization as Concept Design Tool and Their Application for the Mechanical Design of the Inner Frame to Support an Ancient Bronze Statue

“…Finally, a comparison of these results has been made with the actual engineered solution implemented through a classical design approach (Figure 11c), as referred in [63]. The double supported interface at P1 in the engineered solution corresponds to the final TO results (Figure 11), as well as in the slope of the support beam.…”

“…The original statue was recently restored and moved to a new exhibition space in the ancient Capitolium of Brescia (Italy). Restoration also included a new inner frame, described in [63]. The present application assumes the requirements assessed in [63] as the starting point of the concept design with TO and the actual result with its standard design workflow as a reference for its validation.…”

“…Requirements of the design problem [63] are summarized in Table 1, both as design requirements (DR) and topological optimization requirements (OR).…”