PRE-DIAGNOSIS AND NON-DESTRUCTIVE INSTRUMENTAL DIAGNOSIS IN BUILDING: A CASE HISTORY
Italo Meroni - Valter Esposti ICITE - CNR, Institute for Building Industrialization and Technology of the Italian National Research Council Via Lombardia, 49-20098-San Giuliano-Milano-Italy
Retrofit of existing buildings gives rise to the problem of defining what must be preserved and what must be transformed. This involves a complex evaluation of several factors and a particular care during the initial phase of study. That's why diagnostics can take on extremely different roles and meanings. It involves several interactions between kinds of knowledge having different nature which originate many difficulties. The word "diagnostics" brings to mind a "sick" organism and emphasizes the need to find out the causes of the "malaise". This is a preliminary condition before assuming a prognosis or a forecast of the future course, as well as an hypothesis of therapy or the ways and means intended to fight it. The following work provides some contributions to the development of diagnostics, in particular the non-destructive one, in the building field. In this connection, it presents a particularly meaningful case history about the satisfactory organization of a phase of preliminary diagnosis, instrumental diagnosis and interpretation of results. Finally, the work will deal with the primary initial requirements and needs to be fulfilled in order to further develop and diffuse the use of diagnostics.
Publication Source: Trends in NDE Science & Technology; Proceedings of the 14th World Conference on Non-Destructive Testing, New Delhi, 8-13 December 1996.Vol. 3, pages 1545 - 1550 Publisher:Ashgate Publishing Company