MATERIAL DAMAGE ASSESSMENT AND STRUCTURAL HEALTH MONITORING OF HISTORICAL HERITAGES BY USING NDT TECHNIQUES AND PROXIMAL REMOTE SENSING TOOLS

Abstract

The risk and the vulnerability mitigation of historical heritages (e.g. churches, museums and monuments) is an actual relevant topic of interest for their safeguarding with respect to environmental risks, for example considering the high seismic hazard level of their surrounding areas. Based on this rationale, in this paper, classical Non Destructive Testing (NDT) techniques and proximal remotely sensed tools (i.e..a terrestrial laser scanner, an infrared thermal camera and an interferometric real aperture radar) are jointly used for both structural health monitoring and materials control analysis of historical heritages. The proposed approach aims at providing synthetic parameters useful to evaluate the static and dynamic properties of selected structures, such as the 3-dimensional (3D) model reconstruction of the building with the detailed analysis of its structural elements, the thermographic analysis of surface anomalies related to climate induced phenomena, and the vibrating modes of some relevant elements due to environmental induced stresses. Some meaningful results obtained for selected structures within Calabria Region allow showing the benefits of the proposed approach for the non-invasive and non-destructive heritages monitoring in a seismic area.