Description
The need to preserve ancient monumental architecture in conditions of high risk finds crucial support in innovative methods and technologies that can contribute to improve our knowledge of the buildings’ structural health and its evolution for the purpose of proactive maintenance. In this respect, an innovative experimental monitoring strategy has recently been developed and applied to the Temple of Athena in Paestum (Southern Italy, ca. 500 BC), in the frame of a joint research project by the Department of Civil Engineering (DICIV) of the University of Salerno (UNISA), the Archaeological Park of Paestum and Velia (PAEVE) and Leica Geosystems S.p.A. (LGS).
The monitoring activities aim to support an in-depth assessment of the behaviour evolution of the columns on the temple’s Est façade, where a crack pattern has been recognised on some drums struck by a thunderbolt in the 70s.
The monitoring strategy involves innovative wireless sensors that are able to record distance and tilts of abacus reference points, with a sampling time of one hour. The monitoring network also considers weather data and has been designed to be expandable and remotely managed. The monitoring strategy is meant to build a digital twin of the columns in order to reconstruct the evolution of the crack pattern and assess its causes. By employing statistical analyses and Fourier decomposition technique, the applied methodology assesses the structural ordinary behaviour and can identify potential critical conditions.
The paper describes the experimented monitoring strategy and discusses its preliminary results, highlighting the impact of climate variations in the structural response of ancient monumental architecture.
