The structural monitoring system at Palazzo Farnese was completed in October
11 February 2020
On behalf of the French Embassy in Italy, Foppoli Moretta & Associati carried out the design and supervision of the structural monitoring system at Palazzo Farnese in Rome. The installation, carried out by the company IMG of Rome between September and December 2019, was completed recently.
The installed monitoring system was designed to measure, over time, quantities that can be considered either pseudo-static (i.e., varying very slowly over time) or dynamic (i.e., varying rapidly over time), with the aim of assessing the overall condition of the building. During the design phase, the significant quantities to be monitored were selected from all possible options based on technical documentation of analyses carried out over the past decades, as well as specific hypotheses regarding the mechanisms that might be active in the structure.
The specifically installed instrumentation allows the monitoring of:
- temperature variations;
- changes in crack widths;
- wall inclinations;
- groundwater level variations;
- vertical settlements of the walls.
In addition, instruments were installed to measure the acceleration (or velocity) of structural oscillations under dynamic loads of environmental origin (e.g., wind or traffic) or seismic events. The collected data can be analyzed over multiple years, providing valuable information regarding the state of conservation and ongoing phenomena affecting the building.
