Athens Acropolis walls instrumentation

The walls of the Acropolis have suffered severe damage due to environmental causes and human interventions during its long history. Successive additions, remodelling, repairs and other interventions, numerous earthquakes, bombardments, sieges and time itself, inevitably causing structural ageing, have caused damages and structural condition deteriorations which pose serious risks of structural failure.

For the investigation of the Acropolis walls’ structural behavior, the Acropolis Restoration Service of the Ministry of Culture introduced an instrumented health monitoring project. A network of FBG sensors was therefore installed on the Acropolis North, South and East walls. The sensors’ network is constantly providing us with information on the walls’ deformation status and their critical areas’ condition, enabling their structural evaluation and the introduction of alarm values.

South wall

South wall's instrumentation view

upper FBG sensors' layout on the South wall

lower FBG sensors' layout on the South wall

South wall lower FBG sensor array installation works

South wall middle FBG sensor array installation works

South wall top FBG sensor array installation works

East wall

East wall's instrumentation view

upper FBG sensors' layout on the East wall

lower FBG sensors' layout on the East wall

North wall		SouthEast corner
sensors' layout on the North wall's inner side		lower sensors' layout on the SouthEast corner

walls' monitoring diagrams

SouthEast corner's FBG sensor layout stress diagram

strain - time diagram for the upper and lower FBG sensor layouts