Innovatieve technieken voor geïntegreerde structurele schade-monitoring van historisch erfgoed.

Due to mechanical and environmental deterioration effects, our built cultural heritage requires dedicated maintenance, restoration and strengthening. Hereby, structural health monitoring is an important tool as it provides knowledge on the damage accumulation and supports the design and evaluation of strengthening measures. In a first phase of the project, innovative monitoring techniques, based on Acoustic Emission (AE) detection, will be developed to obtain more information on the time-dependent damage progress in historical masonry. AE technique detects the high-frequency energy waves which are emitted by the material itself when damage occurs and is a promising technique for on-site damage detection in masonry. Both, the use of AE piezoelectric sensors and AE fibre optic sensors will be studied for this purpose. Additionally, self-sensing strengthening solutions for masonry will be developed. The overall objective is the development of a methodology for AE-based monitoring, in which early warning systems are used to support the conservation of our built cultural heritage.

Trefwoorden:Structural reliability assessment, Self-sensing strengthening, Fibre optic sensors, Structural health monitoring, Masonry, Acoustic emission