Ricerc@Sapienza

In the European Union (EU), where architectural heritage is significant, enhancing the energy performance of historical buildings is of great interest. Constraints such as the lack of space, especially within the historical centers and architectural peculiarities, make the application of technologies for renewable energy production and storage a challenging issue. This study presents a prototype system consisting of using the renewable energy from a photovoltaic (PV) array to compress air for a later expansion to produce electricity when needed.

The protection of cultural heritage against earthquake induced actions is one of the main challenges the earthquake engineering science and practice are facing. This article presents a seismic assessment study on one of the most ancient colonial buildings present in Peru, the Cathedral of Lima, focusing on its towers. A historical review highlighted how these structures, together with the whole Cathedral, suffered intense damage and partial collapse during previous earthquakes.

Refurbishment of existing and historical buildings is a priority in many European countries. Due to the need of developing a harmonized approach focusing on historical buildings, in 2014 AiCARR (Italian Association for air conditioning, heating, refrigeration) published a specific Guidelines entitled “Energy efficiency in historic buildings” (de Santoli et al., 2014) intended for both design engineers and superintendents to support the energy retrofit actions in historical buildings.

Infrared thermography is a well-known non-destructive diagnostic tool. It has many applications in science and engineering. In this paper, IR thermography is proposed as a tool for helping acoustical inspection of historical buildings, because of its ability in detecting lack of homogeneity in walls. The main features of this idea are discussed and some results are provided.