NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227

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Sonic tomography and flat-jack tests as complementary investigation

procedures for the stone pillars of the temple of S. Nicolò l’Arena (Italy)
Luigia Binda*, Antonella Saisi, Luigi Zanzi
DIS—Department of Structural Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Piazza Leonardo da Vinci 32, 20133 Milan, Italy
Received 15 January 2002; accepted 25 April 2002

Abstract
After an earthquake, which struck the Eastern part of Sicily in 1990, some structural elements of the Church of S. Nicolò l’Arena in
Catania, as the dome and the vaults, were damaged; vertical cracks on the two pillars were detected. It is not clear whether those cracks were
already visible and were simply propagating during the earthquake. It is known that the two pillars probably belong to the original
construction of the church.
An investigation programme (including historical research and experimental investigation with sonic, radar, flat-jack, coring, boroscopy,
etc.) has been recently planned to design the preservation and restoration actions.
The results obtained from sonic tests were compared to the results of the other type of tests in order to set up an investigation procedure
useful for these cases. The paper presents and discusses the preliminary results of the research carried out by the authors.
q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Masonry; Diagnosis; NDT&E; Sonic test; Tomography; Flat-jack

1. Introduction Very interesting information were expected by a

The church of S. Nicolòl’ Arena is one of the most
impressive in Catania. The knowledge about the year of
construction and the evolution of the Church through
historic documents was not so easy [1,2]. The construction
of the present Church of St Nicolò l’Arena in Catania
(Fig. 1) started probably in 1687 following the Etna volcano
eruption of 1660 which covered with lava part of the pre-
existing Benedictine Monastery and church. The 1693
earthquake, which badly hit Eastern Sicily, did not cause so
many damages to the Church due to the fact that only the
lowest parts, foundations and pillars bases were built at that
moment. The annexed Monastery was badly damaged,
therefore the works of construction restarted in St Nicolò
only in 1730. The dome was not finished until 1780 and the
facade in 1796. Other earthquakes caused damages in 1818,
1848 and also the second world war. The Church has a large
dome and vaults supported by very massive stone pillars.
The two pillars, at the entrance were apparently built with a
different construction technique than the others, but all are
made with volcanic stones and lime mortar.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ 39-2-2399-4318; fax: þ39-2-2399-4220.
0963-8695/03/$ - see front matter q 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 6 3 - 8 6 9 5 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 0 6 6 - X
stratigraphy of the pillar section as a result of drilling
cores and sampling; flat-jack tests, sonic tomography and
also radar tests were applied in order to detect the masonry
behaviour and quality of all the church pillars. Sonic
tomography is a powerful method to obtain information on
the conditions of a structural element through the
interpretation of velocity and attenuation maps. In general,
the velocity distribution is an indication of the elastic
properties of the element. The attenuation distribution is
related to the non-elastic behaviour of the material and so
to the presence and importance of fractures. Sonic
tomography can also be a powerful method to obtain
information on the hidden conditions and morphology of
structural elements [3,4].
When a structural element can be accessed from all the
sides as in the case of the pillars of churches,
the tomographic results can be more precise because the
acquisition can be designed to ensure a dense and regular
distribution of rays within the horizontal sections.
The authors have developed a broad experience on the
subject, on several historic monuments [5 – 9]. In the
following an experience is presented of the application of
sonic tomography on the pillars of S. Nicolò l’Arena.
216 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
Fig. 1. S. Nicolò Church. View of the facade.
The investigations are part of a more extensive
diagnostic programme finalised to verify the state of damage
of the building in view of repair intervention.
2. Problem description
After an earthquake, which struck the Eastern part of
Sicily in 1990, the structural elements of the Church as the
dome and the vaults were damaged; the repair of the
damages, apparently not really dangerous, was not yet
carried out when the Cathedral of Noto also damaged by the
same earthquake collapsed. After the discovery that the
pillars of the Cathedral were probably the first element to
collapse, a careful visual investigation was carried out on
the crack pattern of the pillars of St Nicolò and the
appearance of vertical cracks on the ones which are called by
the historians original pillars 1 and 2 (Fig. 2) were detected.
The two pillars were at first subject to a provisional
confinement for safety. In the meantime an investigation
programme was planned in order to know the real situation
of the pillars and of the whole structure and consequently
provide the preservation and restoration actions. Figs. 1 and
2 show the Church geometry and the localisation of the
tested pillars. Due to the difficulty of understanding the
evolution of the church structure and the reason for different
construction techniques applied to the construction its
various parts, the history of the evolution of the monument
from its construction was also studied through archive
documents which could only be interpreted with great
difficulty and did not completely clarify the different ages of
the pillars [1].
3. Survey and interpretation of the pillars crack pattern
From the visual observation it was possible to detect
on the thick plaster of the pillars 1 and 2 a distribution
 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227 217

Fig. 2. Localisation of the tested pillars.

of large vertical and subvertical cracks (some also
diagonal). It is not clear whether those cracks were
already existing and simply propagating during the
earthquake or had occurred before. The plaster was
probably remade in the fifties and appears to be very
stiff. Therefore the decision was taken to remove large
areas of this plaster in order to see how deep the cracks
were going inside the elements. The survey of the crack
pattern of the two pillars is reported in Figs. 3(a)– (d)
and 4(a) –(d), where also the provisional steel confine-
ment is presented. The survey was very difficult because
the cracks, which appeared very large on the plaster were
instead thin and difficult to detect on the irregular stone
texture of the pillar. Nevertheless the diffused damage
which could also be present before the last earthquake
was considered dangerous. In fact while some cracks
appear to have shear origin, most of them are clearly due
to high compressive stresses. This state of stress could be
caused either by heavy vertical actions or by flexural
actions but anyway the situation could worsen in a long
term causing the collapse of the pillars as it was in other
cases [10,11]. Therefore further information were
requested on the morphology of the pillars and on their
state of damage. It was also decided to extend the
investigation also to the other pillars of the Church.
4. Pillars morphology and material characteristic
By simply removing parts of the plaster from the pillars 6
and 7, it was possible to see that two different techniques of
construction were used for pillars 1 and 2 and for all the others.
218 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227

Fig. 3. Crack pattern of pillar 1 as appears on the plaster.

Fig. 4. Crack pattern of pillar 2 as appears on the plaster.

The masonry texture appears characterised by two masonry surrounded by a cover more than 300 mm thick,
different typologies: (i) a solid stonework built by large made with tile fragments, stones and rather weak mortar,
and regular blocks and filled with rubble masonry made locally called ‘incoccio’ (Fig. 5(a) and (b)). Often the two
with rather strong mortar; (ii) a highly inhomogeneous stone typologies are present in the same structural element (Fig. 6).

Fig. 5. Main masonry typologies of the Church. Regular block masonry (a) and incoccio (b).
 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
Fig. 6. Regular stones and incoccio.
Apparently the second one was used as repair technique
(Fig. 7).
Fig. 8 shows a segment of core drilled from pillar 2. As it
is possible to observe, the mortar inside the pillar 2, at the
height of 6.40 m, is very compact. As known, coring inside
the masonry usually does not allow the extraction of
consistent samples of mortar being the operation very
invasive due to the fact that the sample is drilled wet. Even
if the core drilling is usually intended to be slightly
destructive and therefore used very frequently, the limit of
drilling is due to the fact that it spoils the materials
(especially mortars). It gives only a stratigraphy of the wall
interior and therefore it does not allow a real reconstruction
of the wall section. In the case of the sample of Fig. 8, the
optimal mechanical characteristic of the mortar enabled the
extraction of a coherent core of the masonry.
The mortar sampled from the incoccio of the pillar 1 is
shown in Fig. 9. This material appears very weak and
incoherent. From several cores drilled from pillars 1 and 2 it
seemed clear that the external leaf of the pillar was made
Fig. 7. Incoccio probably used to widen the section of the pillars.
219
Fig. 8. Core drilled inside pillar 2 at 6.40 m of height.
with weak material (incoccio) until a depth of 30 cm or
more. It seemed that larger stones could be found in the
internal leaf of the pillar and the hypothesis was made that
the incoccio was applied after the construction as a way to
increase the pillar section. This is the contrary of what
usually is found in loadbearing pillars: an external leaf made
with regularly cut stones and rubble stone in the internal leaf
(as in pillar 6 and in the others).
Chemical and petrographic analyses carried out on the
two mortars show that the incoccio mortar is an air
lime mortar, while the other has hydraulic properties. The
hydraulicity of the mortars sampled by coring inside the
pillars 3, 4 and 6, is revealed, in fact, by the high content of
soluble silica found with the chemical analyses. This value
can be due to the presence of pozzolanic materials chemically
reacting with the hydrated lime.
Fig. 9. Consistence of the mortar sampled from incoccio in pillar 1.
220 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
5. Mechanical tests in situ: flat-jack tests
Following the results of the masonry survey and of
the materials characterisation, it was necessary to have
some information about the stress –strain behaviour of
the pillars masonry in the two different types which were
found. The mechanical tests could not be carried out in
laboratory due to the impossibility of sampling signifi-
cant specimens from the pillars. The only possible
available procedure is the one which allows to carry
out on site mechanical tests. They are up to now possible
only using the flat-jacks. The method was originally
applied to determine the in situ stress level of the
masonry and it has been extended to the detection of its
deformability characteristics. The first applications of this
technique on some historical monuments [12], clearly
showed its great potential. It appeared to be the only way
to achieve reliable information on the main mechanical
characteristics of a masonry structure (deformability,
strength, state of stress). The test is carried out by
introducing a thin flat-jack into the mortar layer, in
masonry with regular and thin joints. The test is only
slightly destructive. After the test is completed, the flat-
jack can easily be removed and the mortar layer restored
to its original condition [13 – 15].
The determination of the state of stress is based on
the stress relaxation caused by a cut perpendicular to the
wall surface; the stress release is determined by a partial
closing of the cutting, i.e. the distance after the cutting is
lower than before [13]. A thin flat-jack is placed inside
the cut and the pressure is gradually increased to obtain
the distance measured before the cut. The displacement
caused by the slot and the ones subsequently induced by
the flat-jack are measured by a removable extensometer
before, after the slot and during the tests. Pf corresponds
to the pressure of the hydraulic system driving the
displacement equal to those read before the slot is
executed. The equilibrium relationship is the fundamental
requirement for all the applications where the flat-jack
are currently used [13]:
Sf ¼ Kj Ka Pf
Sf, calculated stress value; Kj, jack calibration constant
(, 1); Ka, slot/jack area constant (, 1); Pf, flat-jack
pressure.
It must be pointed out that the flat-jack test in the case of
multiple-leaf walls gives results concerning only the outer
leaves.
The test described can also be used to determine the
deformability characteristics of a masonry. A second cut
is made, parallel to the first one and a second jack is
inserted, at a distance of about 40 –50 cm from the other.
The two jacks delimit a masonry sample of appreciable
size to which a uni-axial compression stress can be
applied. Measurement bases for removable strain-gauge
or Linear Variable Differential Transformers (LVDTs) on
the sample face provide information on vertical and
lateral displacements. In this way a compression tests is
carried out on an undisturbed sample of large area.
Several loading/unloading can be performed at increasing
stress levels in order to determine the deformability
modulus of the masonry in its loading and unloading
phases. It is interesting to compare these last results to
the stress level measure in order to verify the present
state of the masonry in relation with its last potentialities
[14].
Several single flat-jack tests were carried out on the
pillars and the detected values seem to show an irregular
distribution of stresses.
The highest values seemed to be particularly dangerous,
taking into account the strength values detected by double
flat-jack. As known, [11,14] double flat-jack tests are carried
out in order to check the mechanical behaviour of the
masonry under compression.
The highest stress values concern the pillars 10 and 11,
supporting the dome, and the pillars 3 and 4.
Pillars 1, 6, 7 and a portion of the perimeter wall (Fig. 2),
which is structurally a built-in pillar, were investigated. The
flat-jacks have the dimension of 625 £ 255 £ 4 mm3. This
was suggested by the characteristic masonry texture,
observed after the plaster removal. The strains were
measured by eight LVDT, six placed vertically and two
horizontally.
The tests carried out on the pillars 6 and 7 gave similar
results. The pillars, in fact, were supposed to be built with
the same construction technique and then, to have similar
mechanical properties.
Figs. 10– 13 show the masonry texture, the flat-jacks
position, the measurements tools and the stress – strain plots
from double flat-jack test. The stress – strain diagrams
(Figs. 12 and 13) demonstrate the good characteristics of
the pillars in terms of compressive strength and elastic
properties.
Fig. 10. Masonry texture and localisation of the double flat-jack test DFJ5
on pillar 7 (Fig. 2).
 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
Fig. 11. Masonry texture and localisation of the double flat-jack test DFJ3
on pillar 6 (Fig. 2).
Fig. 12. Stress–strain curve of the double flat-jack test DFJ5.
Fig. 13. Stress–strain curve of the double flat-jack test DFJ3.
221
The texture of the pillar 1 is shown in Fig. 14, where the
incoccio presence is clearly recognisable. Such masonry,
built by tiles, small stone and weak mortar, is present in
the tested portion of the perimeter pillar, as well as probably
in larger surface (Fig. 15).
The double flat-jack results (Figs. 16 and 17) seem very
different from the ones obtained previously (Figs. 12
and 13). First of all, the deformation is about 10 times the
one of the other tested pillars for much lower stress values.
Furthermore Figs. 14 and 15 show clearly why the measured
values are so much different. This is due to the high
inhomogeneity of the masonry.
This comparison between the two series of data enhances
the different mechanical behaviour of the two characteristic
masonries of the Church.
The local state of stress, measured by single flat-jack and
reported on Figs. 12, 13, 16 and 17, shows that these stresses
are high and in some cases out of the elastic range of the
materials.
Fig. 14. Masonry texture and localisation of the double flat-jack test DFJ1
on pillar 1 (Fig. 2).
Fig. 15. Masonry texture and localisation of the double flat-jack test DFJ2
(Fig. 2).
222 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
Fig. 16. Stress–strain curve of the double flat-jack test DFJ1.
Although these data cannot give information of the
behaviour of the internal leaves of the pillars, they can be
considered an important information on the pillars situation
and behaviour.
Due to the limits of the flat-jack tests which only allows
for external measurements, these tests could not give
information about the internal part. Nevertheless no
alternatives can be found to characterise the masonry across
the section. Therefore another procedure was needed and a
non-destructive one, in order to judge the real state of the
pillars.
Fig. 17. Stress–strain curve of the double flat-jack test DFJ2.
6. Principles of the pulse sonic test
Among the ND investigation methods, the sonic methods
are between the most widely used. The testing technique is
based on the generation of sonic or ultrasonic impulses at a
point of the structure. An elastic wave is generated by a
percussion or by an electrodynamics or pneumatic device
(transmitter) and collected through a receiver which can be
placed in various positions. The elaboration of the data
consists in measuring the time the impulse takes to cover the
distance between the transmitter and the receiver. The use of
sonic tests for the evaluation of masonry structures has the
following aims:
† to qualify masonry through the morphology of the wall
section, to detect the presence of voids and flaws and to
find crack and damage patterns;
† to control the effectiveness of repair by injection
technique.
The first applications of sonic tests to the evaluation of
masonry materials and structures have been carried out long
time ago in the sixties [16]. The difficulty of interpretation
of the results in the case of inhomogeneous materials like
masonry was always known and the first results were clearly
interpreted as qualifying rather than quantifying values.
Several efforts have been put in the tentative of interpret-
ation of the data from sonic and ultrasonic tests [17 – 19].
The fundaments of wave propagation through solids allow
to recognise the theoretical capabilities and limitations of the
technique. The velocity of a stress wave passing through a
solid material depends on the density r, dynamic modulus E,
and Poisson’s ratio n of the material. Resolution in terms of
the smallest recognisable features is related to l, the dominant
wavelength of the incident wave, which is given by l ¼ v=f ,
where v is the velocity and f the dominant frequency.
Hence, for a given velocity, as the frequency increases the
wave length decreases, providing the possibility for greater
resolution in the final velocity reconstruction. It is beneficial,
therefore to use a high frequency to provide for the highest
possible resolution. However, there is also a relationship
between frequency and attenuation of waveform energy. As
frequency increases the rate of waveform attenuation also
increases limiting the size of the wall section, which can be
investigated. The optimal frequency is chosen considering
attenuation and resolution requirements to obtain a reason-
able combination of the two limiting parameters.
The limitation given by ultrasonic tests in the case of
highly inhomogeneous material, as irregular stone masonry,
made the sonic pulse velocity tests more appealing for
masonry.
Limits of sonic tests to masonry can be defined as
follows:
† cost of the operations due to the high number of
measurements which has to be carried out;
 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227 223

† difficult elaboration of the results due to the difficulties 8. Sonic tomography results
created by the inhomogeneity of the material;
† need for the calibration of the values to the different types The sonic tests carried out on S. Nicolò pillars produced
of masonry. 28 tomographic sections (18 horizontal and 10 vertical).
They show the velocity distribution of the elastic wave
generated by an instrumented hammer in the sonic
frequency band (with the main spectral components
distributed from 200 to 4000 Hz). The receiving sensors
7. Sonic tomography
are low-cost accelerometers appropriately fixed on the walls
and connected to a 24 channel digital seismograph.
Among the ND applications the tomographic technique
is quite attractive for the high resolution that can be obtained
[6,20,21].
Tomographic imaging is a computational technique that
utilises an iterative method for processing a large quantity of
data collected on the external surface to reproduce the
internal structure of an object.
The standard result from a sonic tomography is a map of
the velocity distribution on a plane section of the structure
under investigation. The input to the method consists of the
traveltimes taken by the elastic wave to cross the structure
along several directions, which uniformly cover the section
under investigation. The section of the masonry is marked
by a mesh grid whose dimension is related to the expected
resolution and to the distance between two subsequent
transmission or receiving points. The calculation is carried
out, in the case of sonic tests, under the hypothesis that in a
non-uniform velocity field sonic impulses do not necessarily
propagate along straight lines but can follow curved lines
according to Snell’s law.
As cost due to the acquisition time and processing
complexity, a tomographic survey needs good understand-
ing of which results can be achieved and how. In fact, the
accuracy of tomography depends on many parameters:
the source the number and the position of measurements,
the equipment settings, the reconstruction algorithms [5,6].
It is essential to stress that the resolution capabilities of
tomography can be evaluated only taking into account the
measurement locations (i.e. the angular distribution of the
observations and their spatial sampling) and the physical
limits related to the wavelength [22].
For other types of test (e.g. radar tomography) par-
ameters different from velocity can also be extracted, as in
the case of amplitude tomography where the measured
quantity is the amplitude of the signal and the resulting map
is related to the distribution of the attenuation coefficient
[5]. Unfortunately, the extension of this technique to sonic
experiment is not straightforward because the signal
amplitudes are strongly influenced by the variability of the
source and receiver coupling efficiency. Nevertheless, there
are alternative methods that ignore the amplitudes and that
are based on the frequency analysis of the data; they were
experimented on different applications of seismic and
ground penetrating radar [23,24] and they are also Fig. 18. Horizontal tomographies of the pillar 2 from top to bottom,
promising for these sonic investigations. respectively at 8.9, 7.6, 4.9, 3.8, 1.8 m.
224 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227

Fig. 19. Horizontal sections of pillar 6 and pillar 10 at 5.8 m.

The data were processed by using a dedicated software
developed by the authors. The velocity reconstruction is
based on a rectangular grid designed to preserve the
resolution and the stability of the solution. Thus, the
average grid size is about 40 –50 cm and varies from pillar
to pillar according to the pillar geometry and to the number
and distribution of the collected data.
The two most damaged pillars at the entrance of the
Church (pillars 1 and 2 of Fig. 2) have been investigated
with much care: five horizontal sections at different heights
plus vertical sections have been executed on each pillar.
In Fig. 18 the sequence of the horizontal tomographies of
pillar 2 are represented.
A typical distribution of the velocity on the pillars 1 and
2 shows average velocities relatively high at the base and at
the top of the pillars (Fig. 18 a-e) and very low velocities in
the middle (Fig. 18c).
The very low velocities that have been found in the
pillars 1 and 2 and the fact that these pillars show
a dangerous crack pattern (Figs. 3 and 4), confirm the
need of urgent preservation actions. From an external
observation, the masonry texture seems, in fact, very
poor, characterised by the presence of the so called
incoccio. It is worth to remember that also from coring
of the pillars it was observed that the internal mortar is
locally very weak.
The other pillars that have been investigated generally
present much higher velocities indicating a less alarming
state of conservation (Fig. 19).
In particular the pillar 6 seems characterised by the best
quality material, as it is possible to recognise in Fig. 19. The
observation of the masonry texture reveals a large block
stonework, rather regular.
Some results on two very large pillars characterised by a
complex geometry are worth of attention (pillars 9 and 12).
They show higher velocities on the narrow side of the pillar
and lower velocity on the large side (Fig. 20). It is
particularly readable in the vertical sections, as well.

Fig. 20. Horizontal sections of pillar 9 at 1.40 and 4.90 m.

 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227 225

Fig. 21. Example of sonic traces.

This trend is symmetrically observed on both the pillars
(9 and 12) and might be related to a specific construction
design or to a non-homogeneous state of degradation of
these elements.
8.1. Preliminary results from absorption tomography
As already mentioned, amplitudes do not represent a
useful information with the present acquisition technology
because they are influenced by too many factors besides
energy absorption. Instead, a different approach can be
applied to extract an indication of the absorption distri-
bution based on the frequency downshift effect. This
approach has been tested on different geophysical explora-
tion fields as borehole seismic tomography [24] and radar
tomography [23]. Fig. 21 shows a selection of a few sonic
traces indicating that this effect was also observed in the
experiments: moving from data collected near the source to
data collected far from the source the dominant components
of the signal move towards lower frequencies. However,
this type of data collected around a pillar needs a careful
pre-processing to exclude from the spectral analysis the
contributions of high frequency components given by
energy travelling in air.
The parameter that is normally used to measure the
frequency downshift effect is the spectrum centroid. Some
analysis has been done to test whether this parameter is
expected to be sensitive enough to extract the downshift
effect from our data.
As an example, Fig. 22 shows the centroid distribution as
a function of the source-receiver distance. The data belong
to a tomographic experiment on a section that was found to
be quite homogeneous by the velocity analysis and by other
inspection methods; thus, we might also expect that the
absorption properties do not vary so much and that the
down-shift effect will be consistent with the raypath length.
Specifically, for an homogeneous medium, a linear
relation is expected between the attenuation and the first

Fig. 22. Centroids versus raypath length.

226 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
Fig. 23. Attenuation map for pillar 2 at 1.8 (left) and 4.9 m (right).
derivative of the down-shift effect versus the source-receiver
distance. This is what we observe in Fig. 22 where the
centroid data tend to fit a down-dip regression line whose
slope is a direct measure of the average attenuation through a
constant factor related to the source spectrum [24].
This is actually the case as the centroids and the
regression line clearly indicate. As a consequence, the
absorption tomographies produced by backprojecting
the centroid measurements are expected to be reliable
and can be considered for the final interpretation of all
the investigations.
As an example Figs. 23 and 24 show the preliminary
results obtained on some sections of pillar 2 and pillar 6,
respectively.
If these results are compared with the correspondent
velocity maps (Figs. 18 and 19, respectively), it can be noted
that higher attenuation values tend to be consistent with
lower velocities and vice versa.
Fig. 24. Attenuation map for pillar 6 at 5.8 m.
This confirms the interpretation of the velocity maps that
was indicating an alarming situation for pillar 2, especially
from the sections at intermediate heights, whereas the
conditions of pillar 6 seemed to be relatively good.
9. Conclusions
The investigations carried out on S. Nicolò allowed to
understand the behaviour of the materials and the structures
of the masonry, by recognising the presence of different
building techniques.
The characteristic of the two masonry typologies used for
the pillars was controlled by double flat-jack tests, which
clearly revealed the two completely different mechanical
behaviours. These characteristics are of primary importance
in the numerical structure modelling for the safety control.
Furthermore, the results obtained from traveltime
tomographies are very interesting and basically consistent
with the external observations of the pillars.
Anyway, being the problem very complex due to the
numerous parameters which can affect the velocity (voids,
cracks, filling, etc.), these results were compared to the ones
of other investigations applied to the pillars.
In fact, the experience shows that the difficulty of data
interpretation can be partially overcome by complementary
tests as flat-jack, coring and boroscopy, radar, etc.
From a methodological point of view, this intensive
application of the sonic tomographic method on eight pillars
of the same church (an approximate number of 12,000
point-to-point measurements are available) represents a
very interesting dataset that will be further studied to
validate the method based on spectral analysis for deriving
the absorbing properties of these masonries.
Acknowledgements
Authors wish to thank E. Cardarelli, who shared
his expertise in sonic investigations and participated in
 L. Binda et al. / NDT&E International 36 (2003) 215–227
the acquisitions with the equipment of the University of
Rome, M. Antico, L. Cantini, M. Cucchi, C. Marrone, and
P. Perolari, for their contribution in the experimental work
in situ and in laboratory, and the students S. Fraticelli,
M. Perroni and S. Pirotta. Special thanks for their
collaboration go to S. Cocina of the Genio Civile of Catania
and to V. Venturi of Sidercem which supported the on site
and laboratory tests. The research was also supported by
Murst—‘Progetto Giovani Ricercatori’ of the Politecnico of
Milano.
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