Seismic monitoring by piezoelectric accelerometers of a damaged historical monument in downtown L’Aquila

We show the preliminary seismic monitoring of a historical church in L’Aquila (central Italy), which was strongly damaged by the 2009 seismic sequence. This structure, S. Maria del Suffragio church, suffered the collapse of a great part of the dome during the April 6th 2009 Mw 6.1 earthquake. In this paper, recordings of ambient noise and local earthquakes have been analyzed. The seismic data were recorded by means of a dynamic monitoring system (19 mono-directional and 3 tri-directional piezoelectric accelerometers) and of two velocimeters, with all the instruments installed into the church. The aim of this research is the evaluation of the performance of the accelerometers of the monitoring system in case of low-amplitude vibrations. Simple techniques of analysis commonly employed in the seismic characterization of buildings have been applied. The reliability of the in-situ data was evaluated and the main modal parameters (natural frequencies and damping ratio) of the church were presented