Analysis and diagnosis of timber structures in Porto historical centre

The historical centre of Porto was considered in 1996 UNESCO World Heritage to the outstanding universal value of the site, with urban fabric and historic buildings that bear remarkable testimony to the development over the past thousand years of an important European city". In order to contribute to the maintenance of this remarkable set of buildings, with historical, architectural, constructive and heritage value, in opposition to the continuous build heritage degradation process and the population dislocation from the centre to the surroundings, NCREP-FEUP have been participating in many rehabilitation projects, analyzing the conservation state of building structural elements (stone masonry walls and timber floors and roofs). The focus of the present paper is given to the evaluation of the physical state of timber structural elements, namely to the various instruments used on the Analysis and Diagnosis phases, in particular to the non destructive (NDT), medium-destructive (MDT) and, in a certain context, destructive testing techniques

Assessment of timber floors by means of non-destructive testing methods

In the process of rehabilitation of built heritage, the preservation of timber floors is an essential issue. These structures have characteristics that are not entirely known, namely the connections between elements, the load distribution between beams, the importance of secondary elements, such as struts and floorboard, for the attenuation of vibrations and reduction of deformations of the floor, etc. If properly analysed and considered, these aspects can contribute to upcoming well-succeeded interventions, improving the global behaviour of the floors and, consequently, of the buildings. One of the focuses of the present paper is the assessment of the global behaviour of timber floors by means of dynamic analysis, which is one of the non destructive tests (NDT) used to evaluate the reference properties of the wood. In particular, this technique allows estimating the timber floors' stiffness and, consequently, assessing their efficiency and integrity. Furthermore, the paper focuses on the use of other NDT methods, namely involving stress-wave timing, X-ray and resistance drilling, which can provide very useful information about these characteristics. The information obtained with the combined NDT allows a better understanding of the timber floors behaviour and the implementation of more efficient rehabilitation and (or) strengthening technique

List of aphidiines (Hymenoptera: braconidae, aphidiinae) of Madeira Archipelago

Volume: 20Start Page: 61End Page: 6

On the aphid fauna (Homoptera, Aphidoidea)of the Salvage Islands, with new records to Selvagem Grande

Volume: 18Start Page: 111End Page: 11