System Integration for Masonry Quality Assessment: A Complete Solution Applied to Sonic Velocity Test on Historic Buildings

The preservation of Built Cultural Heritage requires a careful diagnosis of the problems that characterize the historical masonries, through investigations aimed at assessing the quality of natural or artificial stone materials of which they are made. In particular, the diagnostics of masonry through Non-Destructive Techniques (NDT) is useful to deepen the knowledge of the construction characteristics, evaluate the state of conservation, and to monitor the effectiveness of the restoration interventions. Among the NDTs, the Sonic Velocity Test is largely used for evaluating the consistency of masonry and allowing the on-site identification of internal defects like fractures, voids, and detachments. The research involves the development of a complete management solution for the sonic measurements of different types of masonry and load-bearing elements. This solution consists of a website-based collaborative platform, a mobile/desktop application, and a reporting tool, which allows data processing from the on-site survey to their visualization and dissemination. The application of this system has been carried out by the LAM Laboratory of the Department of Earth Sciences (University of Florence) to evaluate the masonry quality in several historical civil and religious buildings and to improve the approach to diagnostics of Cultural Heritage.