Sapienza ricerca under 40

Structural monitoring of civil structures using their response to a natural environment is a technique spreading in several countries; many applications to railway and highway bridges can be found in the literature. The application of these techniques to historical structures presents challenges due to the complex geometry, material heterogeneity and uncertainties in the finite element model. This research provides a contribution to these points by the analysis of the response of cases of Italian monuments with different geometry and type of masonry, that is Colosseum, Basilica of Maxentius, Trajan Column and a nineteenth century masonry bridge. The study showed that while the identification of modal parameters is feasible, setting up a procedure for structural monitoring is more involved and requires a comparison between refined mathematical models and reliable experimental results. This comparison has further shown that when dealing with dry masonry structures the mechanical parameters of the solid material are not representative of the assembly since the interactions between blocks have strong influence. In other types of masonry, such as the brick type, the behavior of a specimen is representative of the continuum it comes from and the required updating is limited.