An application of SHMS to a passively controlled structure

This paper is focused on the study of the “Our Lady of Tears Shrine” in Syracuse, which was subjected to a seismic isolation intervention and the successive installation and management of a structural monitoring system. The monitoring system, representing an upgrading and improvement of an old system never made working, has some innovative features, because it allows to manage with one and the same dedicated hardware and software both the slow (thermal variations, relative humidity, wind direction and velocity) and the fast acquisitions, namely those dynamiccaused by earthquake, wind and environmental vibrations. The monitoring system has been recently inserted among those structures maintained and controlled by the National Department of Civil Protection within the Seismic Observatory of Structures. Some records of recent low magnitude seismic events allowed to validate the correct behavior of the whole structure, as well as to make a dynamic identification of the complex construction. A complex FEM model has been used to predict the structural behavior under strong motions and evaluate the effectiveness of the seismic retrofit.