Sensors grid influence on damage detection for masonry towers. A numerical investigation based on the modal curvatures.

This paper aims at contributing to verify the effectiveness of a dynamic monitoring system for early damage detection with reference to slender masonry towers. In the first part, a reference scheme of tower constrained by adjacent buildings is numerically analyzed: changes in the main modal parameters - natural frequencies, mode shapes and modal curvatures – are evaluated. Subsequently, the numerical results are employed to investigate the precision level needed to identify the damage in terms of spatial resolution. Lastly, a local approach based on strain measurements is investigated.