Structural monitoring and earthquake protection of the School of Engineering at Federico II University in Naples

Structural Health Monitoring for civil structures aims at detection of sudden or progressive damages and also at monitoring their performance under operational conditions or under some particular environmental issues (i.e.: earthquakes). A large part of the Italian territory is exposed to medium/high seismic risk, so an efficient protection of the structures located in seismic areas is necessary. This target can be reached by increasing the knowledge of the structural behaviour of existing constructions: so, it is crucial to monitor the performance of civil structures over their operational lives. The present paper deals with SHM technologies adopted to analyze the structural response of the School of Engineering Main Building at the University of Naples Federico II. In particular, after a short description of solutions and systems installed on the structure, some experimental data and preliminary results of analyses aimed at the identification of the most relevant modal parameters are presented.