Health Monitoring of Medieval Masonry Towers by an Acoustic Emission Approach

Non-destructive tests were performed to assess cracking evolution in two medieval masonry buildings, Sineo and Asinelli towers rising respectively in the Cities of Alba and Bologna, in Italy. As regards the case study of Alba, in situ compressive flat-jack tests on small-sized elements of the tower were conducted in conjunction with acoustic emission (AE) monitoring. At the same time, crack patterns taking place in large volumes of the tower were likewise monitored through the AE technique. As for the case study of Bologna, a masonry wall of the Asinelli tower was monitored during a period of intense seismic activity. The observed correlation between the AE activity in the monitored structural element and local earthquakes points out a significant dependence of deterioration processes in the tower on the action of nearby earthquakes. In both cases, the trends of two evolutionary parameters, the b-value and the natural time (NT) variance κ1, were derived from the AE time series to identify the approach of the monitored structures to a critical state in relation to the earthquake occurrence.