The church of the monastery of Sant Cugat close to Barcelona is a medieval
construction characterized by a complex structural behaviour stemming from the interaction
among various structural elements built over different periods. Despite having survived for
several centuries, such structures are often affected by slow irreversible deterioration
mechanisms that can jeopardise their stability in the future. In order to identify such
mechanisms at an early stage, and to better understand the cause of visible pathologies, a static
structural health monitoring (SHM) system was installed in the church since 2017. Although
this monitoring strategy, aimed at the continuous measurement of key slow-varying parameters,
has been used successfully in the past to facilitate the diagnosis of this structural typology, the
interpretation of data collected by such systems remains a challenging task. One of the main
reasons for this is the fact that many monitored damage and deformation features are sensitive
to changes caused by environmental conditions. To address this issue, this paper presents the
application of a fully automated data analysis procedure to the records collected from the SHM
system installed in the church of the monastery of Sant Cugat. The procedure consists of two
parts. The first relies on the identification of models that comprehend an Auto-Regressive
output and an eXogenous input (ARX) to represent the dynamics of each monitored response
using suitable environmental parameters as predictors. The identified models are then used to
estimate filtered evolution rates. The second part of the procedure involves classifying each
monitored response into pre-defined evolution states based on outcomes from the first part. The
main results from the application to the case of the church of the monastery of Sant Cugat are
presented and the implications for the diagnosis of the structure are discussed.
Abstract
The church of the monastery of Sant Cugat close to Barcelona is a medieval
construction characterized by a complex structural behaviour stemming from the interaction
among various structural elements built over different periods. Despite having survived [...]
The paper focuses on the long-term monitoring of the Milan Cathedral. After a concise historic background on the monument and the description of the sensing devices installed in the church, selected results obtained during the first year of static monitoring are summarized as well as the lessons learned in view of the Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) of the Cathedral. In more details, the time evolution of different static features (i.e. strain of metallic tie-rods and tilt of columns) is presented, along with the correlation between those features and the environmental parameters and the possible minimization/removal of the environmental effects with SHM purposes.
Abstract
The paper focuses on the long-term monitoring of the Milan Cathedral. After a concise historic background on the monument and the description of the sensing devices installed in the church, selected results obtained during the first year of static monitoring [...]