Farnese Palace at Rome – Crack Pattern Survey and Monitoring

The complex crack pattern that affect the walls of the building has been surveyed since 1983 and, also its structural monitoring has been carried out from that time, albeit in a discontinuous and partial way.

From this year Foppoli Moretta ed Associati has been commissioned from Service de Travaux et Bȃtiment français en Italie (STBI) of the French embassy to carry out a new and accurate general survey of the crack pattern of the building, first collecting and systematizing all the data taken from previous surveys (drawings, forms and diagrams), then making an accurate on site survey of the crack pattern, which was subsequently returned in a computerized form to allow an interactive, rapid and effective access to information.

This organic and complete operation has allowed (also by comparison with the analyzes already carried out) to highlight the structural movements to be controlled and to design a new structural monitoring system aimed at controlling the most significant static and dynamic quantities:
- foundation settlements, to be checked by topographic leveling;
- changes in groundwater level through piezometers;
- variations in crack opening, to be measured through strain gauges;
- variations of inclination of the facades, through inclinometers;
- vibration phenomena due to natural causes (wind, traffic, use) and exceptional (earthquake), to be controlled by accelerometers.

The transducers shall be implemented in an automatic monitoring system that shall allow to survey with great precision the structural movement of the palace, to set acceptability and alarm threshold and, on the basis of the data acquired in the context of multi-year time periods, to interpret the detected phenomena on statistical basis and on structural basis.