Feasibility of a Thermography Nondestructive Technique for Determining the Quality of Historical Frescoed Masonries: Applications on the Templar Church of San Bevignate

Abstract

Thermography is a non-destructive and non-contact technique allowing, without taking samples, gaining information about several aspects of heritage buildings. This contribution presents the last phase of a research path, started with laboratory tests and now aimed at a real case of great cultural value, which involved the use of the thermal imaging camera to unveil in-depth defects and the wall texture, hidden by valuable plasters or frescoes, in order to correlate the quality of the masonry to its mechanical properties. For this, a method has been devised, made of an original integration of thermographic and post-processing techniques, and recently was applied for the first time to a real case study: the Italian Templar church of San Bevignate, part of an architectural complex from the 13th century located in the city of Perugia. The opportunity to establish the masonry quality of a historical building using non-destructive testing (NDT) represents a little-known possibility to frame not only important factors for the conservation of the frescoes but also information on the seismic vulnerability of historical masonry architectures in order to preserve the artefact from being damaged during the surveys and to plan any effective intervention of restoration and structural reinforcement.

Correlation of Vulnerability and Conservation Between Artistic Assets and Structural Elements: Campaign of Thermographic Surveys on the Frescoes of the Templar Church of San Bevignate

“…Moreover, non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques can be used in regard to both evaluation of mechanical properties and for characterization of microstructural features such as grain size, texture, nucleation, defects, deformations, or damages in various contexts, also concerning historical masonries [25,26,27]. In particular, the pictures obtained from thermographic surveys can be used to estimate the elastic characteristics of masonry texture, by means of the method of the test-windows [28]; preliminary results are reported in [7].…”

“…This contribution presents a contemporary approach to the theme of experimental investigations relating to the protection of heritage masonry buildings and the parietal art goods associated with it. The article constitutes the last phase of a research path started with laboratory tests [4,5,6] and, with the collaboration of the Municipality of Perugia, applied subsequently to a case study of value [7] and within the present contribution is examined more closely: the Italian Templar church of San Bevignate, part of an architectural complex from the 13th century located in the city of Perugia. Especially, this heritage building was selected because pose special challenges for damage detection and conservation, due to the presence of large parts of frescoed masonry surfaces.…”

Importance of Image Enhancement and CDF for Fault Assessment of Photovoltaic Module Using IR Thermal Image

“…Heat (i.e., infrared) is emitted from the PV panels during power conversion. This heat dissipation process and the heat emitted by an object, or a person can be captured and recorded using a thermal camera [12,13]-the use of which is increasing in different monitoring applications in fields such as engineering [14,15], structural systems [16,17], security [18,19], and medical fields [20,21]. Moreover, a thermal camera can help to highlight hazardous areas radiating temperatures beyond their normal operating limits, the overheating on an electrical system, and related abnormalities in machines.…”

Elastic Properties Estimation of Masonry Walls through the Propagation of Elastic Waves: An Experimental Investigation

“…Moreover, it must be considered that historical constructions are mainly made from masonry, a complex heterogeneous material whose mechanical behavior is strongly dependent on the properties of the mortars and blocks and by their arrangement. In this framework, the research on appropriate non-destructive techniques, especially related to the on-site tests, for the characterization of masonry is still a challenge [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15].…”