Study of wood beams in buildings with ground penetrating radar

Abstract

A large number of buildings in Barcelona city were built during the XIX Century, using wooden beams and masonry. Nowadays, these structures, some of them declared architectural heritage, suffer damages and important deterioration. Geophysical surveys by means of ground-penetrating radar could provide valuable information on the most damaged areas of the beams, and could supply useful data to improve restoration policy and heritage protection. The knowledge of the structure is needed in many cases, but often there is not information about the internal structure and the constructive techniques. However, a large number of supporting structures use to be embedded in the floor and covered by mortar, obstructing the direct visual inspection. Therefore, the access to the structure can be one of the highest difficulties in those inspections because the direct access is not possible. Hence, GPR was applied to determine internal constructive wooden elements and its state of conservation. In this work, several buildings were studied to locate damaged beams and to identify internal structures. Differences in reflections due to damaged and healthy beams appear are clearly highlighted in GPR images in several cases, while in other, differences are not so apparent.