Historical Building Stability Monitoring by Means of a Cosmic Ray Tracking System
- Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering of the University of Brescia, Via Branze 38, 25123 Brescia (Italy)
Cosmic ray radiation is mostly composed, at sea level, by high energy muons, which are highly penetrating particles capable of crossing kilometers of rock. The ubiquitous and steady presence at the Earth's surface and the high penetration capability have motivated the use of cosmic ray radiation also in fields beyond particle physics, from geology, archaeology, speleology to industrial applications and homeland security. In particular, in recent years, the novel technique of muon tomography has been proposed, with the aim of performing non invasive inspection of large non accessible volumes, material atomic number Z and density discrimination, and three dimension image reconstruction of the inspected volume. In the present paper, after a short recall of the physical principles and mathematical formalism on which muon tomography is based, a number of examples of application of the novel technique in industry and homeland security issues is given. Moreover, a new application of cosmic rays detection techniques in the field of civil engineering is proposed. The aim is the monitoring of the stability of large structures, in particular the static monitoring of historical buildings, where conservation constraints are more severe and the time evolution of the deformation phenomena under study may be of the order of months or years. The new technique may be seen, in some way, as the reverse problem of muon tomography. As a significant case study, the monitoring of the wooden vaulted roof of the Palazzo della Loggia in the town of Brescia, in Italy, has been considered. The feasibility as well as the performances and limitations of a monitoring system based on cosmic ray tracking have been studied by Monte Carlo simulation and discussed in comparison with more traditional monitoring systems. (authors)
- Research Organization:
- Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), New York, NY (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 22531485
- Report Number(s):
- ANIMMA-2015-IO-x10; TRN: US16V0525102426
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: ANIMMA 2015: 4. International Conference on Advancements in Nuclear Instrumentation Measurement Methods and their Applications, Lisboa (Portugal), 20-24 Apr 2015; Other Information: Country of input: France; 74 Refs.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
42 ENGINEERING
BUILDINGS
CIVIL ENGINEERING
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COMPUTERIZED TOMOGRAPHY
COSMIC MUONS
COSMIC RAY DETECTION
DEFORMATION
IMAGE PROCESSING
INSPECTION
ITALY
MONITORING
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PERFORMANCE
ROOFS
STABILITY