NANOTECHNOLOGIES / SMART-MATERIALS IN TIMBER CONSTRUCTIONS BELONGING TO CULTURAL HERITAGE

摘要

Conservation and maintenance represent strategic fields of interest in EU for their high social/economic impact. Timber structures may present degradation phenomena, that require a special attention in the intervention on cultural architectural heritage. An integrated approach for interventions on timber structures is essential for the project, by considering use of materials, techniques, devices with high technological content and by taking into account different aspects of optimisation, innovation and improvement of existing methods. The complete process is considered as a whole, not only as related to the single phase of reinforcing/restoration but also regarding maintenance (including monitoring and retrofitting) of structures, so to guarantee safety with a general cost saving approach. Main themes of the paper are: - efficiency and reinforcement of timber with nanomaterials CNT; -improvement/tailoring of devices to automatically collect, transmit, store information and to process it, exploiting conductive properties of CNT; -definition of innovative maintenance, based on continuous and automatic monitoring. Savings and improvement of safety against unexpected failures are expected.