Integrated NDT for Building Cultural Heritage

In the world, a high percentage of cultural heritage consists of buildings of great historical and artistic value built with various materials related to the geology of the place where they are located. Microclimatic conditions with other local effects such as traffic vibrations, air pollution, absence of continuous maintenance, etc. caused structural problems. These problems can affect the safety of buildings and people. Normally to assess physical damages and structural safety on historic masonry manual optical inspection, laboratory tests on cored samples are carried out. There are some issues related to these tests: (i) many times much masonry appears homogenous at the surface, and (ii) they are related to the investigator experience. New investigation procedures and methodologies are therefore necessary for monitoring the structure directly on site. This is possible using the nondestructive testing (NDT) methods. These methods allow first one to preserve the building, and second one to avoid disturbing the state of stress and strain of the structure. The built heritage is composed of different types of stones, bricks, with cavities, cracks, and wooden or iron elements inserted into walls and therefore constitute very complex task. Generally the recognition of detachments, voids, cracks, and wall thickness is crucial to verify the building structure stability. Particularly in the cultural built heritage study, there are some important problems related to the impossibility of touching and taking samples in order to perform in laboratory study. The assessment of decay's degree is therefore related to in situ noninvasive methods. In the chapter, a combination of GPR inspection with seismic evaluation will be considered with new development related to the data acquisition and processing. They allow detailed knowledge of the internal structure of the monuments that is the key for conservation and the restoration.