Structural health monitoring of the retrofitting process, characterization and reliability analysis of a masonry heritage construction

In the last decades, heritage constructions (HC) had been rehabilitated and inserted in functional areas of cities, therefore, the necessity for keeping them structurally safe and functional is high. Therefore, the employment of structural health monitoring (SHM) and operational modal analysis (OMA) techniques can be worthy alternatives for structural characterization and safety management. However, in the literature few cases of SHM of HC are reported, and guidelines or recommendations specifically for safety assessment of HC is an effort still undergoing. Thus, the present work describes the strategies for SHM and structural characterization of a Portuguese stone heritage construction, namely Santo António Church and introduces a new approach for heritage assessment so-called Reliability Analysis Based on Vibrational Measures (RABVIM). The results showed that SHM allowed to guarantee the efficiency level of the retrofitting measures carried out, while OMA provided useful information on the structure modal parameters, under operational loading actuation, apart from the data for reliability assessment. Finally, this work demonstrates that RABVIM can be an interesting and useful tool to support the safety assessment of HC.