Vibration Isolation and Structural Health Monitoring of the Historical Monument “Mourned Over the Dead Christ” in Naples

Preserving cultural heritage objects against vibrations is a crucial topic, that needs to receive more interest in order to develop practical and effective vibration control scenarios for this application. Many museums and historical monuments are in city centers, where the main train and subway stations of the cities are located and therefore, they are mainly subjected to traffic- and subway-induced vibrations, as well as the ones due to the visitors walking and construction sites nearby. Thus, these vibrations may cause fatigue damage on artistic objects during a long period of time. In most cases, heritage objects have an inestimable value and represent a common heritage that must be safeguarded, but the studies on their vulnerability under human-induced vibrations are few, as well as unique reference guidelines, containing setting values of acceptable human-induced vibration levels, are not available now. This study focuses on application of Structural Health Monitoring on the “Mourned over the dead Christ”, created in 1492 and located in the Monumental Complex of “Sant’Anna dei Lombardi” in Napoli and represents an undisputed masterpiece of Renaissance culture. This study is going on in order to know the level of vibrations on statues before design and implementation of base isolation devices.